Memories from mid-80’s New Hampshire.

We had a great playground game that went under two names: Muckle was the polite, “enlightened” name, and the other was much less polite, and will not be repeated here. The game was what all playground games should be: agressive, painful, and somewhat sadistic.

The game was played with a football, or in a pinch, any other object (we played with a comb once). One person had the ball, and had to run away from the other kids ( an avereage game had 40 or so players). The other kids tried to tackle the kid with the ball. When tackled, he tossed the ball straight up in the air. What ever kid caught the ball next became “it” and had to run away with the ball.

Here’s the catch: Occasionally, we would have some wimps who would refuse to ever catch the ball. Thus, a “catch” was counted as the first player to touch the ball after it was thrown. No fair dropping it to avoid being tackled. If you dropped the ball, an automatic “pig pile” was called, and all forty kids got to jump on you at once (if you held on, perchance only one or two kids would make the tackle). Needless to say, parents and teachers hated this game, but kids loved it. There was nothing cooler than taking down some kid twice your size.