Old Man's Play -- Fading and Fading Childhood Games

Author: He Chengbin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features: Jump Rope
In middle school, I was the physical education monitor in my class. During PE class, Teacher Xu often took a group of boys to exercise while leaving the girls in my care, asking me to coach them in passing and shooting. I had extremely thin skin and would blush whenever I saw girls, and coaching them was practically torture for me—I was so nervous that my hands and feet turned cold. The girls completely ignored the shy male "coach" and made my life a misery.
"Girls are good at jump rope. Why don’t you join them?" One day, Teacher Xu handed me a bundle of ropes. I had never jumped rope before and thought it was just a girls' game. It was clearly Teacher Xu making things difficult for me! I said I didn’t want to be the physical education monitor anymore, but he had already taken the boys to play basketball and hadn’t heard me.
With no choice, I told the girls, "Today, everyone will jump rope." The girls must have known I couldn’t jump rope, and a few mischievous ones immediately said, "Monitor, please demonstrate for us so we can learn from you." I said, "You can’t jump rope? Jumping rope is something everyone knows how to do—what’s there to learn?"
The girls insisted that I show them, so I picked up the rope and started jumping. They all counted together, "One, two, three…" Before they even reached five, I had stepped on the rope. The girls burst into laughter, and the boys on the other side turned around sharply, all looking this way, wondering what was going on. The PE teacher came over and asked what was happening. I told him I didn’t want to take the girls out to play. The PE teacher glanced at the girls and said, "Don’t cause trouble and follow the rules. Anyone who doesn’t listen to the physical education monitor will be punished!" With that, he turned and walked back toward the boys.
The girls were incredible jump rope players—almost all of them were experts. They jumped with such speed that the rope became a blur. As one girl jumped, another suddenly dodged and slipped into her arms, while the rope continued to spin rapidly. The girls especially loved group jump rope. Two girls would spin a long rope, and the others would take turns jumping one by one, or sometimes two, three, or even five at a time. I reluctantly joined them, and the girls all shouted together, "One, two, three…" To my surprise, I managed to jump over fifty times, earning them a round of approving applause.
In my memory, the only thing girls were good at was jump rope. Years later, when I started dating, I found out my girlfriend could jump rope too. She said her main activity as a child was jump rope and kicking shuttlecocks, and that even this easy and convenient activity isn’t as popular anymore. Later, after I got married and had a daughter, she was in middle school and wasn’t as good at jump rope as I was. I told her, "None of the girls in our class can’t jump rope." But her response left me speechless: "Do the girls in your class know how to use the internet and play games? There’s even a jump rope game online now."