Blast From The Past

Remember Chinese Jumprope? I do. I used to be pretty good at it too. I had forgotten how to play, so I looked it up. I got the following info from this website:

If you aren't familiar with the game, Chinese Jumprope involves a very large coated rubber band-type thing that two people put around their ankles and face each other, and then the other person stands in between them and jumps a complicated dance around the parallel lines of elastic without touching, falling, or missing the jumprope when necessary. The dance went:

You start by straddling the elastic.

"IN!": You jump in the air and land with your feet inside the parallel lines of elastic, not touching the elastic or making it touch the ground.

"OUT!": You jump in the air and land with your feet outside the jumprope, just like your starting position.

"SIDE!": You jump in the air and land straddling one side of the elastic: one of your feet is in the "out" position, the other is "in".

"SIDE!": You jump to the other side of the jumprope with your feet straddling.

"ON!": Then you jump in the air and land with both of your feet on the elastic, having them under your feet.

"IN!"

"OUT!"

"SCISSORS!": This was where you would be leaving the jumprope, but you would drag one of your feet along the way so that it crosses and touches the other elastic. It is the only time the two ropes touch.


"IN! OUT! SIDE! SIDE! ON! IN! OUT! SCISSORS!"

After you complete that the people inside the ropes move the elastic up to their knees. In out side side on in out scissors. If you complete that they move the elastic up to their thighs. In "thighsies" the tricky part was "on", since you had to jump in the air and nail that rope under your feet on the way down. In out side side on in out. "Smallies" came next, where the two would put the rope back around their ankles, but would put their feet together so the "in" space was only a few inches (eight year olds have some tiny-ass feet). If you survive "smallies" you move on to "widies", where the two people would spread their legs as far apart as possible. It made the "out" section particularly difficult. There were other parts that involved how you jumped: walksies, runsies, trotsies, skipsies... then there were some where one half would be wide and the other would be small so you had to make your feet land diagonally and such. If you ever screwed up you took the place of one of the rope holders.

Now, go out and get yourself a Chinese Jumprope and get to playing!