Schoolyard Yo-Yos and a Name Carved in Wood

One at a time, the players recite a tongue twister as many times as possible before tripping over their tongues. Whoever recites the most twisters, such as these, before making a mistake wins: “She sells seashells by the seashore.” “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many peppers did Peter Piper pick?”

YO-YO’S

A Filipino yo-yo salesman would come to the school yard for two days to demonstrate the various tricks you could perform with a Duncan loose-loop yo-yo with the hope that you would become so intrigued, you would go to a store and buy one. We always did. If you bought your yo-yo right away and brought it back the next day the Filipino fellow would quickly carve your name in it. You wound the string around the spindle inside the yo-yo halves and inserted your index finger through the loop at the end of the string while holding the yo-yo in the other hand. You then released the yo-yo and let it ride down the string. When it was almost at its fullest extent, you jerked the string to bring it back up to your hand and then you released it again. This movement could be continued indefinitely. Once you mastered the basic yo-yo technique, you could make a number fancy plays by throwing the yo-yo briskly to its free-spinning position (loose-loop) at the end of the string, where it continued to spin until you jerked the string to make it return to your hand. While at its free- spinning position, the yo-yo could be made to travel along the ground (Walking the Dog) or the string could be gathered up, while the yo-yo continued to spin, and could be manipulated into many different figures like “Cat’s Cradle”, “Swing”, “Trapeze”, etc.