Nixon Playground Fad
The first American President I remember is(was) President Richard Nixon.
I didn’t know anything at all about Nixon except that I had seen his face on television – and he looked pretty mean to me.
At my school there was a fad. A kid would draw the following set of lines on paper, or in the dirt, or by laying out twigs:
| | | / | | | |
Then ask “Who’s the devil?”
Even if you had seen it, you weren’t supposed to let on that you had the slightest idea who the devil might be.
Next, the lines were connected: the first two first lines diagonally as an N, the I left as is, the X crossed, the O and N finished off.
N I X O N
Nixon was the devil in this little playground game, which didn’t really make any sense to kids at that age (early grade school). It was done in a kind of secretive, ritualistic way – we had no idea what it meant, but we passed it on. Memes at work.
Does anyone else remember this?
If so, what year do you remember it – what state?
I’m curious about how widespread it might have been.
Oh, and here is a Gazoo for my Blogazoo companions. Yay! You found one.
I was just talking to a friend the other day about how powerful childhood memes can be, especially among young girls…. My grandmother, mother and I all knew many of the same clapping games and jumprope songs– but they never passed them down to us– we learned them in school. And if you talk to many women who grew up in different states, most of them would know the same rhymes and songs.