We played ringalerio in Howard Beach in the 1960s. It was played at lunch time in the schoolyard at Our Lady of Grace elemetary school. It was great – until someone got hurt and ringalerio was banned by the nuns. We still played after school for a long time.

The rules were the defending team had to grab someone from the ‘it’ team and hold on until they said ‘ringalerio one two three’ three times. If you held on that person went to jail. You could free all your jailed team members by touching the jail before getting caught. When all of the ‘it’ team was in jail you switched sides. It was fun but also pretty brutal – lots of fat lips, skinned knees and bloody noses.