The Hopscotch Expertease

Clare Sera, our audience tonight is composed mostly of hopscotch players. And that's your... Spelled wrong? Naturally. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong. The podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert comedy writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Ladies and gentlemen, listeners from around the globe, welcome to another episode of Expertise. I'm your host, Danno Sullivan. Clare, welcome to the program. As the world's foremost one-legged hopscotch player, I think you're going to have some interesting insights.

Hoop, hoop, hoop. Oh, we got it right at the end of a round. A square, we call it, Danno. The end of a square. So a round of hopscotch is called a square. I'll bet there's some other interesting jargon, like... Well, for our listeners who don't know hopscotch, could you quickly describe the game? Oh, gosh. This game has a storied history, and I'm looking forward to telling you one of those stories. It also, it was the game of kings at one time, Danno. I remember King Hoppy I of Egypt was depicted on an obelisk playing hopscotch. Yes, hopscotch was first designed according with, you know, if you've seen the pyramids, you know that they are made from giant blocks.

So folks would hopscotch right up the sides of those blocks? Up the sides of the blocks. Now, I consider hopscotch an extremely challenging game, and I have since second grade when I first learned to play. I consider that on a horizontal playing ground. I can only imagine the difficulty of working vertically over those hopscotch squares. It didn't work out well. I mean, you know that so many of the kings back in that time died at about 14, and that is why. So for millennia, they were still playing vertical hopscotch. Yes, they played vertical hopscotch from the start of Egyptian time, from like zero o'clock on, up until...

It actually ended not long after Tutankhamun. Based on what we know from the hieroglyphics, were the rules for Tutankhamun different than the way school children play hopscotch today? At that time, the end point of a hopscotch game being, I mean, you got a tomb in the pyramid. Oh, I see. If you made it to the top. So that's actually a pretty nice prize. The way we played it, it was just, you know, bragging rights around the schoolyard. Yeah, sure. Or, you know, like sometimes the few tokens that you would use to determine your pattern in the hopscotch. So you could carry those into the afterlife?

Which was really fun for the kids. Children do enjoy thinking about death and the afterlife. What are they going to have there? Where's their grave going to be located in the pyramid? They would sometimes draw their outline of their hopscotch pattern on the part of the pyramid where they wanted to be laid to rest forevermore. Oh, isn't that sweet? Yeah, yeah. Well, let's bring the things forward into, not the present yet, but a little closer to our time. The scotch part of hopscotch. Once the hopscotch was moved from going vertical to being horizontal. Standardized.

Standardized. At that time, being horizontal was a favorite game of the scotch people. Yes, yes. It's not played much anymore. At least it's called sleep now, I think. Well, it's a specific type of, you know, it's after a pub crawl, say. Mm-hmm. You get a better view of the ground. And the sky. Yes. In some variations. In some variation, but we're focused on the ground because that's where they started drawing the patterns in order to find their way home after a good night's pub crawl. So the playing field of the hopscotch game would actually be a pathway to home.

Yeah, I mean, it moved from being a vertical game of the gods and an entrance to the afterlife to a drunken Scottish man's stumble home after a pub crawl. Clara, I know that in the 1600s, 1700s, into the 1800s, there was a lot of unrest in Scotland and a lot of debates internal. Well, Dano, in the 1700s, hopscotch was a game of dandies at Westminster in England. So I imagine that your typical Scotsman on the street was not going to be caught in a kilt playing a game like that. That is absolutely correct. But the people of Scotland had something that the dandies of London did not have, which is a sidewalk.

Finally, a place where a play field could be marked out quickly and horizontally. Now all the components are coming into place for modern hopscotch as we know it today. That's exactly right. You can thank the pub crawls of Scotland. The only thing missing is the children. They drink a lot younger in Scotland. I remember as a child that we would often get lubricated before heading out to play. Drunk, pixelated, inebriated. We call it playing warm. Yes, that's exactly what my gran would say. Sure. She'd say, well, Danny, if you're going out to play hopscotch, play warm.

Which is also how I came to have one leg. Can we save that story for just a minute? Of course. That's a heartbreaker. We have moved forward in time now to modern hopscotch. How did it move out of Scotland to become the worldwide phenomenon, including the Olympic activity, that we know today? Dan, there was a family, the MacTavishes, famous for their elaborate hopscotch patterns. Because it's not standardized, is it? No, no, no. My goodness, you could have squares that are 10 feet apart that you have to hop. It's like a tarpaulin. Every family could have their own hopscotch pattern.

Yeah, so the MacTavishes, they owned a pub. And their home was down the street from the pub. Oh. How do you get from one place to another? You hopscotch. Was it faster to hopscotch than just to walk, let's say? No. No. Because you have to go forward, and then back to start again, and then forward a little bit further, and then back to start again. Hamish MacTavish, the father, of this family was loud, and he was drunk 24-7. Was he the one they called the Bastard Hopscotcher? That's it. That's it. Big old Bastard MacTavish. Back and forth across the street. Claire, the reason I know that name is from the folk song that you were singing just before we came on the air, the legend of Bastard MacTavish.

Are you willing to sing any of that for us? Oh, you know I am. Oh. Oh, cross the street on your own two feet. Hop to one, to the left, to the right. Cross the street and back again. For our listeners at home, Claire's CD, The Legend of Bastard MacTavish and Eight Other Big Hits, is available for download on all your favorite services. Well, Claire, we're just in our last few minutes here, and I wanted to ask you about your personal tragedy. Where would you like to begin? Oh, I'd like to begin with my two feet back. Thank you very much. Well, Dano, being a purist, a hopscotch purist.

What does that mean, a purist? What's not a purist? Someone who's impure. I just mean that I'm a pure person that likes hopscotch. There is no pure version of hopscotch, obviously. It started with the Egyptians and went on to the bastards and landed in the streets of New York. So a pure person playing is fairly uncommon. I remember your T-shirt, God's Hopscotcher. Right, yes, yeah. That was when you got on the Olympic team and you tried to get everyone to wear those T-shirts. But a lot of your teammates understandably felt that was maybe a step too far. Yeah, I did try to get it to be an Olympic sport.

You're absolutely right, that so far I've not been successful. Oh, so much for your Olympic team. You don't have to be in the Olympics to have an Olympic team, Dano. So you had your extra-Olympic-Olympic team of hopscotchers. Yeah, we like to call it off-off-Olympic. Yes, yes. So you were the godscotchers. Yes. And when your team started up, Claire, I'm looking at the pictures right here, you have two full legs. Yeah, and a lot of people think of this story as a tragedy, but that's not really how I view it. No, no, because I know, well, I'll let you relay the events.

What I'm talking about is hopscotch requires three skills. Agility, speed, hopping. Oh, so precision token throwing is not considered essential? Well, I mean, you're in baseball. Is it essential that your ball goes to the batter if you're the guy that's the ball thrower? So what you're saying is that there are three essential skills, and then all the other essential skills are just considered givens. You don't have to classify them as essential skills. Look, I said the number three, and that's what I'm sticking with. Right. And that's what I'm saying. So there are three essential skills, which you've named for us.

Also, along with the three essential skills, you must essentially be able to throw a token and draw a square with limestone chalk. Yeah, that just sounds essential. And you do need to be able to see where the squares are. Yeah, that would be essential, obviously. We're coming up with braille hopscotch soon, hopefully, to open this up to everybody. Yes, you would need a very delicate cane to detect the outline of the squares. That's right. Or perhaps raised squares, I guess, would be the solution there. Or people just yelling, to the right, to the right, to the left, forward.

You're getting cold, you're getting cold. Yes, yeah. Warmer, warmer. Well, we're all warmed up before we play hopscotch. That's right. So on this day, it seemed like a good idea, and I'm going to stick with it and say that it was. We were qualifying for the Off-Off Olympics. Our speed was not matching that of South Indonesian team. We had the agility. We did not have the speed. Two out of the three. Which is what I thought, too. And it's like, well, I know how to get one out of the two, and that is just to whack off one of my legs. So there you were. One shoe too many.

One shoe too many? No, wait, Claire. I know we're in our last couple of minutes here, but how does a person just whack off a leg? That's not something you can do willy-nilly at the edge of a hopscotch court. Dano, have you been to war? And I mean like war in the 1900s. No, I have not been to war in the 1900s. In like the early 1900s, where they'd pull out a bottle of scotch and a bone saw. Oh. Oh. This is what those Scots folks meant when they said, time to play hot. You get out the bottle. Yes. You got your hooch. You got your bone saw. Right there at courtside. Well, and I wouldn't have thought of it, but you know who was cheering us so loudly from the stands and really wanted us to win for our Olympic team?

Hamish McTavish. The bastard himself? The bastard himself. You had to win one for the bastard. He came running at me, hopped up on scotch, with a bone saw. So he... Making that blulululu in the wind as he came running towards me. Ululating. Ululating like a Scotsman. That's an expression my old Graham used to say. He did not stop to ask. He removed your leg courtside without so much as a by your leave? And without so much as anyone else blinking. I mean, everybody was blackout drunk at this point. I mean, because these are high stakes. This is the extra off Olympic.

At professional level hopscotch, I'm sure that just comes with the territory. You got to be blotto. It's got to be recorded because nobody can remember what happened. Okay. Including the recorder. And on the recording, there's a pause. And you hear Hamish McTavish screaming as he's hopscotching his way across the track. Ululating, right? And he was ululating. He had one leg came in. And then you just hear. So that must have made things seem extra complicated to have that donkey braying while he was sawing off your leg. It was quite a sight and a sound. Yes. So, oh, I know we only have a few minutes here, but I have so many questions.

First of all, were you too drunk to care or were you scared for your life at this point that you might wind up in a pyramid shrine of your own with the hopscotchers of old? It should have been a terrifying and traumatic experience. But instead what happened was that all the teams came together and they started singing the ballad of Hamish McTavish in a circle around me as he was sawing off my leg to give me the advantage for our team. I've never experienced teammanship to that extent. Wonderful. So were you able to play in that very game or did you need some time to recuperate?

I had to play. I had no choice but to leap up from the surgery on my one good foot. So this is a huge advantage in a way to have one solid hopping foot. There was a double advantage to it. Yes, I had one. I was lighter. I had the motivation. Mostly the motivation was to get the hell out of there because I didn't know what had just happened. Finish it up and go home. I was drunk. I stood up. I was well bandaged. He stripped his kilt into bandages like right there on the spot. We saw much more of Hamish McTavish than anybody ever should see. Did I win that game? No, I passed out on the last square.

I completely passed out white as a sheet. Claire, pod listeners around the globe right now are crying on your behalf. Some people say I passed out because I'd lost so much blood. I'll bet some others say that you were just soused with the liquor. You know, you can be warm on liquor and go out cold. Well, Claire, I have to say that I've been following your post-Hopscotch career with avidity. Delighted to see that you're excelling at jacks. You're known in certain mumbly peg circles. And you are a dervish at the Double Dutch Jump Rope. Thank you, Dano. I appreciate all that.

But you know, Hopscotch will always be the nearest and dearest. I want it to endure as a purely good time for children, for families. It's family fun at its best with a history that speaks volumes. Just for the children getting started today, do you recommend playing hot? Would you play hot again if you had to do it over? I would do everything exactly as I have done. And I absolutely would recommend a couple of shots for kids before they get out on the squares. And just to say, too, you know, Dano, we focused on the origins of the Scottish Hopscotch. But part of the delight for me has been seeing how it has spread out across North America and that each region has brought its own flavor.

They have, you know, Tennessee Hopshine because they will do the moonshine. Yeah. They warm up on moonshine. And they call it Hopshine there. You also have- That's real nice when you've got the liquor manufacturers actually sponsoring the games that require liquor. I feel like that's a cycle that can last forever. You know, and I'm going to say that to your listeners, too. Take it home. Make it your own. This can be, you know, hot vodka, hot bourbon, whatever your family drinks every night. Incorporate that so that it's really like the kids feel the family history in it.

The Expertise Spelldrom podcast is free. And like the Amish, all are welcome. Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.com. And follow us in your favorite podcast app like the expert podcast listener we know you are. Bring your children as you go Eight in the morning on to four When you hop with both your feet You're gonna do it nice and neat Hop, hop, hop Hop, hop, hop Hop, hop, hop I'm not sure why they sang it like pirates.