Hopscotch / [Sidewalk Chalk] Obstacle Course

Instructions:

Hopscotch (my mom’s rules)

  • The squares are numbered one to ten. 

  • Everyone needs an item to throw that can be distinguished as their own. 

  • Everyone’s rock will begin in the first block. Wherever there is a rock, you cannot jump in that square. 

  • One foot in a square at a time. You jump in such a pattern that you must land in each block that is empty between one and ten.

  • Once you get to ten, you turn around and hop back to one. Again, avoiding any blocks with rocks in them.

    • On your route back, you must swoop and grab your rock.

  • If you made it to the end and back without stepping on a line, falling out of the design, putting two feet down in one square, or landing in a square with a rock, then you toss your rock into block two. 

    • If you over- or under-throw and miss block two or if your rock lands on a line, then you must toss the rock back a number. And go to the end of the line until your next turn. 

    • If you step on a line, fall out of the hopscotch design, or land in a square with a rock, or put two feet down in one square, you must return to the end of the line and wait your next turn.

  • Repeat the sequence.

  • The first person to ten wins. 

Obstacle Course 

  • Get creative with the designs and prompts 

Praxis (why + theory):

Hopscotch is a universally recognized invitation into play. The design alone compels individuals to jump through a time portal without the need for an explicit invite or initiator. Whether we engage the hopscotch as a competitive game or encounter the design as an obstacle course along our walk, the game itself ushers us back into our humanity via the common thread ingrained within our bodies from some distant, obscure memory that we all seem to share. Like hand-clapping games, we often pause to wonder aloud or ponder to ourselves how we all know these games despite growing up in different cultures around the world. 

Instructively, the game and our seemingly ineffable compulsion to engage with it visibilizes the work of ideology. As Ruha writes, “if ideologies are imagination + power, then the most effective ideologies are those that need no police to enforce them” (Benjamin 75). Similarly, we frequently encounter the hopscotch design alone–unmanned–and yet, we respond joyfully with no one to enforce the rules of the game. We have internalized the rules and committed the memory of the game to our bodies. If we acknowledge this as true, then we can use play as a tactic to counter and generate new ideologies that invite rather than coerce and command, that liberate rather than tyrannize and oppress–that keeps us connected to our bodies, our joy, and our shared memory. 

Here, I combined the praxis of Hopscotch with the sidewalk chalk obstacle courses because I think they do similar work. At a recent Solidarity Play Day hosted by the Weelaunee Coalition and ATL Parent Like A Boss, Inc., a coalition member drew a series of large bubbles in a curvy vertical direction. The caption around the bubbles read: “Burst Cop City’s Bubble.” The first bubble contained the instructions, “Hop Here.” There was a hopscotch pattern that read, “Hop if you love Atlanta” on one side and “Hop if you hate Cop City” on the other. As folks were leaving the MARTA station, we witnessed countless people silently jump through the design before continuing on with their day. A playful invitation into an expression of solidarity with the struggle to free us all.