Plenty of picking and choosing games passed down through years

Thought of as an innocent way of deciding who went first or who got the last piece of candy, the game Rock, Paper, Scissors is actually a game with a long history stretching across the world.

Surfing the channels once I noticed a show in a Las Vegas bar playing the childhood game in which the players pump their clinched fist in rhythm three times, “throwing a symbol on the third representing either rock, paper or scissors.”

For those who never played, rock crushes scissors, paper covers rock and scissors cuts paper, thus determining the winner. We did the game to determine who would buy the next bottle of pop or who would get the corner piece of cake. These people were vying for a $50,000 cash prize.

I remember a variety of ways of picking and choosing we practiced in my youth. One of the oldest was Einey, Miney, Miney, Mo with a tune that went around the circle of fists or shoes until it stopped on one person who would be eliminated or sent to a specific team. Sometimes though we just picked team captains this way and then the captains picked their team in rotation.

If we were playing baseball the popular way of determining the home team was to toss a bat in the air and have one of the captains catch it. The other captain placed his hand above the first then vice-versa until one had his hand atop the end of the bat. I got pretty good at catching the top of the bat in the air, a move always viewed as unfair.

There was also the old-fashioned coin toss, still used at the start of every football game. We took tossing coins to other extremes when it came time for someone to buy the pop at work. We called it “matching.” Everyone tossed a coin and covered it with the catch hand on the back of the other hand. Everyone held their hands together as the coins were uncovered. Odd man was out until you got down to three. Then the odd man bought for everyone.

We also pitched pennies for cokes with the person whose coins landed closest to the wall winning and the worst pitch buying. We also “lagged” at pool to decide the break. This was done with both players banking a ball off the far rail to see who could leave it closest to the near rail.

If a deck of cards was used in whatever game, or was just nearby, we would cut cards with the highest card turned over starting play. I’ve also seen big poker pots decided that way if a dispute arose.

Lest you begin to think my youth was totally misspent, one of our games was actually an innocent way of learning to share and take turns as far as I was concerned.

There was a golden rule in our household, used when sharing a candy bar, dividing a coke or any other similar dilemma. If one of us did the halving, the other always got to do the choosing. If that didn’t work, Rock, Paper, Scissors would break out.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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