26 March 2014

It's "duck, duck, GRAY duck"


NOT "duck, duck, goose."  According to the StarTribune:
We play Duck, Duck, Gray Duck, while the rest of the planet plays the inferior Duck, Duck, Goose...

The games begin the same way. Participants sit in a circle, while the person who is “it” circles the group, tapping each player. That’s where the differences start. In DDG, the tapper says only “duck” until using the word “goose,” at which point the tappee jumps up and gives chase.

DDGD is more elaborate. To each “duck” designation, the tapper also adds a descriptive color, such as “red duck” or “yellow duck.” The chase starts when the tapper dubs someone “gray duck.”..

The impetus behind his sudden national prominence was a column in the online news source BuzzFeed. Minnesota native Katie Heaney wrote about growing up playing Duck, Duck, Gray Duck, only to discover as an adult, much to her dismay, that the kids in the rest of the country are “playing some abomination version called Duck, Duck, Goose.”
The rest of the story is at the StarTribune.



Photo credit: Glenn Stubbe • Star Tribune

6 comments:

  1. Very interesting. I loved Duck, Duck, Goose as a kid. This post took me back to kindergarden playing Duck, Duck, Goose at school in the gym on a rainy cold winter day with my classmates. Thank you!

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  2. Duck, duck...bah!

    I sent a letter to my mother. That's what we played.

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  3. Feeling now that my childhood was deprived as I have never played (or heard of) either version.

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    Replies
    1. I never played Post Office. I feel really deprived.

      Lurker111

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  4. I was a duck, duck, goose player.

    Having children running from differences in family (duck vs geese) is more abstract then having kids run from differences in color (grey's not a color, but neither is black or white). Too many of these children's games are based on a scarlet letter, a mush pot, kooties, 'majority vs minority and you don't want to be the minority' concept. Why not use hut, hut, hike?

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