Do you ever wonder how children end up playing the same childish games as the generation before, yet the parents aren't the ones teaching them? It's weird. Much weirder than the phenomenon that when we were in high school, we thought we named the drinking spots in the woods when actually, our parents did. (Ocala readers: Certified, Canopy, Pyramids.....representin' Slowcala!!!! LOL). We totally didn't come up with those names. But seriously, how do little girls play the same things at slumber parties if an adult doesn't teach them? What adult would teach a kid voodoo games?
Where am I going with this? Do you remember, girls, that we used to play "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board?" Guys, this is what we did at slumber parties when we weren't talking about you and smearing lipstick on the person who passed out after Poltergeist. (That was me, the kid with narcolepsy. I woke up to Katie drawing all over me with a look of hatred on her face because I had done it to her a couple of hours before. HAHA!) How did we know how to play it if an adult didn't teach us? Strange! And this game TOTALLY worked. You lifted the girl up with just two fingertips!
The game goes like this; thanks to Wikipedia for saving me time:
One participant lies flat on the floor, and then the others space themselves around him or her, each placing one or two fingertips underneath the participants body. The person closest to the head commonly begins by saying "She's looking ill", which the others repeat; then "she's looking worse" is spoken and repeated back. The general direction of the call-and-repeat describes how the prone person is looking worse and worse, followed by saying "she is dying," and, finally, "she is dead."
Variations of the spoken part of the game occur, with a common modern version the person being lifted is told a story about their death and asked to imagine it happening to him or her. It serves the dual purpose of "freaking out" the participants and convinces the participants that it will be easier to lift this person. All versions end with the phrase "light as a feather, stiff as a board" chanted by the entire group (save for the prone person, who pretends to be dead) as they attempt to lift their companion's body using only their fingertips. Some versions omit the story entirely and only the "light as a feather..." chant is used. Allegedly, after these repetitions, the person being lifted will seem lighter or even entirely weightless.
Another variation of the game takes place with one person seated in a chair. Four volunteers agree to stand around the sitter, two on the sitter's left side and the other two on his/her right. Each of the four places two fingers under each corner of the chair's seat and the four together will attempt to lift chair and sitter, which generally fails. The volunteers will then perform some small ritual, usually involving rubbing their hands together or circling the chair in various direction (counter-clockwise, walking backwards, etc.) After this ritual, the volunteers hold their hands over the sitter's head to "transfer" energy into the sitter which will presumably make him/her weightless. The lifters then retry lifting the sitter the same way as before.
Explanations to the game:
In many versions, each of the (in the example) five people sitting on the other person uses only one or two of his or her fingers on each hand to do the lifting. It is particularly easy to lift a heavy weight when it is evenly distributed amongst a group of four people. The phenomenon of the weight seeming less on the second try around or after some sort of ritual is due to increased focus and the "lifters" being more in sync with one another.
One of the best rational explanations for such reports is that the participants are tricking their minds, by way of the chanting, into believing that the person being lifted is "light as a feather". The body still reacts to the command from the brain, but the mind perceives it differently. Simply put, five (example) people can easily lift one person, especially when those five people are tricking their minds into thinking that the person is light-weight.
Another reason for the apparent success of the levitation is the "self-fulfilling prophesy" concept. The lifters "know" a human being is too heavy to lift with a fingertip, so subconsciously, they may not exert enough effort on the first attempt. After the "ritual," the participants may believe that the body is now supposed to move, or that the ritual itself has given them power, and therefore they exert enough effort to raise the participant off the ground.
It turns out that the game goes back quite a ways:
The game could be seen played in 17th century London during the plague outbreak. Samuel Pepys a naval administrator noted this being performed as a sort of ward against the disease. In his conversation with his friend Mr. Brisband on July 31, 1665, Pepys reported, "He saw four little girles, very young ones, all kneeling, each of them, upon one knee; and one begun the first line, whispering in the ear of the next, and the second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and she to the first. Then the first begun the second line, and so round quite through, and putting each one finger only to a boy that lay flat upon his back on the ground, as if he was dead; at the end of the words, they did with their four fingers raise this boy high as they could reach, and he [Mr. Brisband] being there, and wondering at it, as also being afeared to see it, for they would have had him to have bore a part in saying the words, in the roome of one of the little girles that was so young that they could hardly make her learn to repeat the words, did, for feare there might be some sleight used in it by the boy, or that the boy might be light, call the cook of the house, a very lusty fellow, as Sir G. Carteret's cook, who is very big, and they did raise him in just the same manner." Pepys also spoke of the chant that accompanied this performance.
Those were the days....slumber parties were so much fun, until the one girl started crying. There was always one girl who cried at every party.
Have a great Friday!
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