Story by Sandshoe
We played beamey at “little lunch” which was morning recess and at “big lunch” at midday underneath the raised school rooms on posts. The regular spacing of the posts black with creosote described the width of our courts and shallow grooves that were lines in the concrete floor made by its being laid in squares became serving lines-two equidistant from either side of the position of the central joist beam supporting the floor of the school rooms above. Players stood behind the second line that was the furtherest from the overhead central beam.
The wing of the school consisted of three rooms. The potential underneath it was two beamey courts under each room according to the spacing of the posts ie six games could be played at one time (12 players).
One player of an opposed pair standing at the serving line with a tennis ball in their hand raised their arm and bent their elbow to throw the ball from the level of their shoulder with an expert thrust. The object was to bounce the ball off the central joist beam so the ball returned to the player and could be caught.
If instead of it connecting with the central joist beam it flew off into the court of the player on the other (opposing) side (delineated by the central joist beam), or if the player failed to catch the ball on its return, the ‘turn’ faulted to the opposing player.
Each game was comprised of a set of throws by the player.
First set was ten throws that connected with the beam and full-catch with two hands each time the ball returned to the player as accomplishment of its bouncing off the beam.
Second was ten throws and full-catch with one hand.
Third was ten throws and clap-catch on the ball’s return (catch with two hands). Fourth was ten throws and two claps-catch and so on up to five claps for senior players who might also challenge a champion to execute six and so on.
Each set of ten throws had to be completed and if not were begun again when the ball faulted back to the player who had not accomplished their full set. Each set of ten that was accomplished by a player signalled that the players change sides and the players walked to the other end of the court – swapped ends – before resuming play.
Players held their own creatively, challenged to more complex tasks by each other including catching the ball behind their back and/or throwing the ball under a raised leg and alternate legs. The more experienced the players, yet more complex the challenges issued. The skill of the game included its self regulation that if a player was unable to progress to ten throws and consecutive catches or clap-catches within a reasonable time, they graciously conceded and the ball passed to a new player. The excitement generated keen contenders and audience that grew the longer the champion player held their ground as happens in any sport. The bystanders lined up between the courts in closely packed lines and exclaimed, clapped and jeered. For one set players threw the ball so it bounced off the beam and fell to bounce within the court before it was caught. The ball at the point of being caught had to have had enough spin originally incorporated into its trajectory to fall graciously into position as it lost momentum. The game slowed, but room for error caused a fluster of excitement among bystanders such was the level of skill required that was understood and appreciated.
The area was not uniformly or well lit at the best of times. The inner wall had a series of windows set in it high off the ground, but threw awkward shadow in dark blocks. Sunshine in changing striations cast angles of light into the eyes of the player facing the outer end of the court that was open to a quadrangle of bitumen. The sun’s glare generated a momentary illusion that the ball disappeared when it was thrown at the beam.
I had taken this game for granted until I read as a University student the volume by Iona and Peter Opie, pub.1959, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (Oxford University Press).
I recognised school yard games and rhymes I had half-forgotten. Oranges and Lemons as a well known example and its variations recalled our chanting in the school ground the names of these places and bells that in North Queensland in Australia we had little or no familiarity with. Yet, like ducks to water we chanted as if we knew what we were singing about.
Such was our enjoyment in the play we organised ourselves, I had never wondered how we knew the language of rhyme and play. Iona and Peter describe games they had collected from geographically far-flung contributors of knowledge of children’s activity, pastimes and social alliances through which games were reformed, child to child, generation to generation. Children moving to different schools in a neighbourhood took their rhymes to the next, making up variations on original games, but changing words and meanings depending on the interests of the day or the bright spark’s who made up a new joke on a refrain.
The random thought occurred that I might be unlikely to encounter in literature a description of the game of beamey. Might it be eccentric to my hometown and school. Since, I know from canvassing Facebook users on a local interest page that beamey was widely and fiercely played in other schools in the area in the same way we played it at my school, bouncing a ball off a central joist beam under the floorboards of an overhead school room…and dependent on a complex set of rules and challenges.
The Opies’ central thesis as I read it is that children live in a creative playscape (my word, I think) of skill and inventiveness that nevertheless has a common heritage, a childish built-play environment, schoolyard to schoolyard and across seas. Migrants bring their play and other travellers carry it back with variations in a never-ending criss-cross of fertilisation. Parents’ play with their children perpetuates the heritage.
The game of ‘tag’, as another example I can think of, is played the world over that a group of children forms into a circle a child runs around inside until they suddenly swoop to touch one of the children in the circle on the upper arm. A variation of it I played with my friends was the child ran around the outside of the circle. The children in the circle could not second guess who the next person ‘tagged’ would be. In either game, the resultant excitement was a whoop and a mix of exclamations and shouting, “You’re it”. The game is one of empathy and collusion. The collusion is designed to develop group skills and reflex judgment. A variation involves a melee of children darting and confusing in a good humoured manner the person who is ‘it’. The skill is to not get immediately tagged back when tagging.
The wonder of it all is that these games do not degenerate into bad feelings and wounded pride. ‘Tag’ proceeds apace so the huffing and puffing of the individual runners red in their face from exertion, but never anticipating serious harm turns into serious exercise. The attention paid concentration and focus, but particularly preparedness to maintain ‘tag’ and not generate a biff-up is evidence alone of the children’s creative intention. Readers will recall a host of variations of this simple game.
Although as far as I am aware entirely organised by children for children, beamey may be different in that it is shaped by the built environment itself, which is its limiter.
algernon1 said:
Beautiful essay shoe, now that I have time to read it. I have vague recollections of similar games being played in primary school but not of a beam. Handball seemed to be the game that I remember, unfortunately sometimes though the self appointed cool kids would try to control the game. Algy, you can only have one game then your out. I’d make sure I would make it to King and stay there only to be beaten when the the end of lunch bell would ring. Our primary school had a large grassed open space where we’d play games like forcings back, by throwing a tennis ball or kicking a football where points were awarded by hitting the fence or building with the ball.
We used to play something similar in High School where we’d use the senior lawn to do the same thing, the game had aspects of AFL at a time when AFL was a foreign game in NSW. The game would often finish when the football would end up under a car on the the Pacific Highway and we didn’t have another ball to play with.
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sandshoe said:
algy. I thought on the famous reference by Don Bradman that he used a fence to throw a ball at I think he said and the keen tennis players used a brick wall to play ‘against’….was wondering if there were any games of that sort that 2 or more people played: Mine that I know of were all solitary. From your account seems there were. Thank you for tossing in a few examples too Algyy, making a collection.
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sandshoe said:
I think in regard to environmental adaptation of the availablilty of mangos for hurling at each other with a resultant satisfying splat and the spreading of the orange flesh from one part of the person to another….
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sandshoe said:
Another fruit was a strange one called a 5-corner. I have never seen them again. They were a favourite in pirate games. I guess the energy here has been diverted from childhood games. Anybody who has similar additions I hope we can collect some more…
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vivienne29 said:
Lovely stuff Shoe. Beamers was obviously only something which could be invented in Queensland. We played a lot of skipping rope stuff, marbles, tag, throw a tennis ball as far as possible (over the netball court) and of course swap cards. Some games were very seasonal.
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helvityni said:
…we played hop-scotch, tag, hide and seek, many different ball games…
Before school age my cousin and I sat in sandpit, and played with our dolls, I was the dressmaker, so my interest in well made clothes goes back a long way…
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sandshoe said:
Thank you, Viv. That is intriguing you refer to throwing a ball as far as possible, was that a solitary exercise or something you did as a challenge between children? Is over the netball court perhaps two people one on either side to receive and throw back? I have never heard of it.
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gerard oosterman said:
I liked this post very much Shoe. We were away for a few days.
I remember lots of games but I think boys do play different ones. We used hollow keys into which we inserted life match heads. We suspended this key by a looped string tied to the end to a nail that fitted inside the key. We would bang the contraption against a brick wall, and…bang, an explosion. It stopped when we had put so much ammo into the key, it exploded!
Later on the hollowing of oak tree acorns and fill them with tobacco and after inserting a hollow straw, simply get sick smoking. Later again, another game, a kind of musical chairs or spin the bottle, but with girls.
And now ( for the pedantic linguistics)… this game of going to funerals more often than weddings.
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sandshoe said:
Gez, for my own part, I keep a funeral at arm’s length as long as possible by eating my greens.
I followed the steps of your game with the key and the nail fitted inside the key. Whammo! The pinnacle of achievement was that the KEY exploded!? KABOOM! Sounds like it was exciting.
You as a child fitted a hollow straw into the oak acorn I assume to inhale the smoke of the tobacco you somehow encourage to smoulder inside the acorn? That is a bong by sounds and that an adaptation of environment I know nothing about as oak acorns weren’t known of, neither smoking anything in my childhood circles…
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helvityni said:
I love this one ,sandshoe…missed it as we had to go to Sydney yesterday to help Daughter unpack, to deal with furniture and the rest of the probs setting up a new home…
Just quickly: years ago I read Penelope Mortimer’s Pumpkin Eater…and I wondered why such a strange title. Later on I found it came from a children’s rhyme; Peter, Peter pumpkin eater….
At the time I was not very familiar with English nursery rhymes. Learnt about them when I had my Australian kids…
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sandshoe said:
Interesting, helvi that you were not familiar with English nursery rhymes. I wonder what rhymes did you know when you were a child…
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helvityni said:
…the Finnish and the Swedish nursery rhymes, and later on some German ones…
See, I’m Finnish, I had English at High school in Finland, but learnt the English nursery rhymes in Australia much later on when I had my kids here.
I bet your mum did not teach you any Finnish kids songs either, sandshoe 🙂
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sandshoe said:
Yes, I always recall you were native born to Finland, Helvi. My immediate neighbour to me over the road from where I lived once was native born to Finland. While unfortunately I have lost contact with her, I sang with a wonderful young woman I admired a great deal whose maternal background was also Finland. In regard to the latter she had travelled as a result of childhood experience that she was born in Canada. I wish I was still in contact with her, helvi. Something happened there that I disappointed her at a time when she was ambitious to sing with a similarly wonderful woman but as well changed from the chorus we both sang in to the Trade Union choir. Aaagh. It was a change I shyly allowed its space and missed so much. She was a wonderful leader. For me, experience of the Trade Union choir would have been so excellent, but I found some schedule conflict. In fact too, I place that my voice was mysteriously failing me and without a clue or background with anybody who would pick up that something serious was wrong with it I was a lost soul increasingly anyway. Always on that edge. What a pity these experiences and decisions determine longevity of friendships but opportunities too. In short, to get back to the subject at first hand my admiration of her rested as equally on some romantic notion that her mother was from Finland. Amazing how we establish ideas about each other’s countries or backgrounds, helvi.
That all said, o, yes in my case helvi my mother could not teach me song that was sophisticated of another language. That was way out of her immediate experience although not comprehension growing up at the turn of the century in an isolated bush place that was turning into a ghost town once a thriving mining town. She had to leave school at 11 because the school closed. She taught me something of the Chinese culture of Australia, helvi. My mother was gracious and gentle. She took to the magic of that culture as equally as she came first hand out of a family of story tellers and bush bards. Hers was an oral story telling tradition although her mother and father were both literate. The bush was a harsh place, helvi. At home however, we sang French cabaret songs when I was a young age and my mother regaled us with stories of the bushies of various nationalities. You hold a position of some privilege, helvi to speak more than one language fluently and access story telling tradition from a range of cultures.
Share your stories, helvi.
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helvityni said:
Thanks for that, sandshoe…your mother must have been a wonderful woman, she certainly brought you up well, I value your honesty….many thanks.
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sandshoe said:
Will you share your stories, helvi perhaps? My comment was not meant to suggest I thought there were no other stories on the face of the earth. I meant literally I was wondering what stories you learned. A favourite of mine when I was a child was Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates so that was almost my entire childhood education of a European childhood (aside Walter Scott and RL Stevenson etc of the UK, Enid Blyton and so on, American folklore generated through Lousia may Alcott, Mark Twain.
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sandshoe said:
My mother was a very interesting woman, dear helvi but we think that of our mothers don’t we. That was a kind comment you made about her bringing me up well. She certainly tried. xx
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atomou said:
Delicious little essay on the wonders of kids’ ability to, like bees, criss-cross fertilise games.
The interesting thing is that these are games invented by them. At times, perhaps an inventive parent or teacher would have helped but I’d suggest, the kids would tweek it to suit themselves and/or the environment.
These are not games promoted by huge organisations, like those behind Tennis and footy. They are absolutely, kids games.
As for the criss-cross, I’m reminded of the time I was in the waiting room of my GP and a mother walked in with her baby in her arms. The baby was sucking its thumb. They were asian as it happens and it struck me that, gee whiz, every baby on the planet must know how to suck its thumb! Something in the wiring of all kids’ brains! I was fascinated by that!
One also wonders about such games as hang the tail on the donkey and the one that I had my students play often, hang the butcher. I was beside myself trying not to laugh when I was given this extra class (Year 9) in a school I’ve never been before. The instructions of the absent teacher was to get the kids to play hang the butcher using words of more that five letters.
The first kid came up and drew six dashes. The letter P eventually came, followed by others and then E. Two Es were put next to each other… It took the full period for the kid to reveal that the word was Peenis!
I couldn’t wait to get out of the classroom to burst out into hysterical laughter!
I bet the criss-crossing of this game will spawn an ever-burgeoning forrest of new words!
Thanks again, Shoes!
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vivienne29 said:
Inventive lot weren’t they.
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sandshoe said:
LOL ato re it spawning an ever burgeoning forest of new words…interpretations like ‘peenis’ as well I warrant. 🙂
Thank you for your enthusiastic response. I am very glad you enjoyed my essay and the recall it inspired. perhaps you will pen an account of the childhood games you played especially those that involve you all like (I reckon) sure footed goats chasing each other around the village playing the equivalent of tag. 🙂
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Voice said:
Lovely reminiscences there that of course recall some of my own. I’ll write a few later maybe when I’m not juggling.
For now, I want to add the social value of Tag as an ice breaker. I’ve seen many a time two kids (always boys) who don’t know each other get over the awkward phase by going straight to Tag, bypassing conversation.
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sandshoe said:
Thank you. Nice detail re tag, Voice. I guess that function where it works can be understood in the context of empathy that I refer to. Looking forward to your returning to share some knowledge of your own schoolyard games, Voice. I hope you get that time.
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Voice said:
Beamey sounds like the ultimate adaptation of handball perhaps – given you had beams rather than walls.
My earliest recollection of a school game was kickball – like baseball/softball/ whatever but with a soft rubber ball the size of a basketball. I was in outfield in Year 1 having just moved to a new town, and I caught the ball. Everyone was amazed I caught it, and I was amazed they were amazed. I had thought I was quite good at ball games from playing with my younger siblings and father on the back lawn, and I had no idea why they should have supposed otherwise. Much later I realised it must have been because I was small for my age, and young for my year.
Then there was tag and most commonly girls vs boys. If the girls were caught we were (conceptually, based on honour) tied to a big tree. If you caught a boy you kissed him!
There were a succession of crazes in higher years – elastics, hopscotch, even cat’s cradle. Totally different for my kids. They played handball, swap cards (till banned). Tag was BANNED by the teachers. Would you believe? World gone mad.
Anyway, as I recall writing once before, eventually the kids effectively dodged this ban by changing the name and adding a new rule or two. Probably totally unconsciously, by which I mean they wouldn’t have described what they were doing that way themselves. But you can’t suppress such a basic and harmless natural instinct for lower primary kids.
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sandshoe said:
Hand-eye co-ordination good and your eyesight I imagine as well (referring to your describing how you caught the rubber ball)…landing on the right (appropriate for you) foot and being balanced. It is a cute picture. I was wondering if you went on to play other games that used that skill of catch. These days I guess you would be in the girl’s football team fo’ sure…
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