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Do people with ADHD and/or autism often really like buttons? I’ve seen this love of buttons come up quite a few times in neurodivergent places, which always results in me enthusing to that group about The Button Game we played in my Brownie pack in the 1980s. It involved a massive fuck off tin of buttons. Probably a biscuit tin that dated from before the war.
Setting: a cavernous church hall. There are wooden chairs around the edge. Possibly with the bum imprints on them that some old wooden seats used to have. Why did they do that? That was weird, right? At one end of the hall is a stage. The stage area is sacred. Magical. Children are not supposed to play around it. There are strict rules about it. Every time the adults turn their backs, the children scurry into the corridors on either side, up the rickety wooden steps and onto the stage. Not me. I always follow the rules.
Cast: about a bajillion small girls in brown dresses and golden yellow neckties, with brown bobble hats tucked into the leather belts (with attached purse) around our waists, which is the official bobble hat location, when they are not on our heads. Smart black shoes and long white socks (because we have yet to be told that only ankle socks are acceptable). Several frumpy older ladies (just to be clear, I am older and frumpier than these women ever were), in their 30s, and maybe even their 40s. They are wearing blue uniforms. Like some kind of weird military-nursing hybrids. They are Brown Owl, Tawny Owl and, errrr, the others.
Script: piles of Buttons are placed on the wooden seats all around the edge of the hall. We walk around and peruse the wondrous Buttons. The older girls have become ‘experts’ in the Buttons and are now mentally marking off where certain rare and desirable Buttons are. Then, after an appropriate amount of time has passed, the leaders shout out categories like ‘The Cat Buttons’, ‘The 4-holed Purple Buttons’, ‘The Gold Buttons With Embossed Anchors On Them’, and we scatter to collect all the Buttons in that category. As the Buttons are handed to the leaders we are given updates like ‘Three Cat Buttons still to find!’
There is Button-related jargon that we have to learn. What is a Shank? What is a Toggle? There are 2-holed Buttons, 4-holed Buttons, flats, studs, mother-of-pearls, horns.
Maybe there are points for collecting the Buttons? I have no idea. I mostly see it as a co-operative game. It probably isn’t. But some Button categories have only one or two Buttons in them, and, if I find one of those Buttons, I will bask in the satisfaction of it for a week. [I’ve since learned that some people1 had a strategy of surreptitiously moving Desirable Buttons mid-game. You would think you knew where the single Rose Button was located, only to be disappointed when you rushed confidently to the bum imprint where you had previously noted it, and found it gone.]
That was it. We tidied up buttons for adults who had scattered them around. And we bloody loved it! The Button Game was a treat. We only got to play it on special occasions. I want to reproduce it somehow as an adult. If I could play The Button Game once a month for the rest of my life, I would be very happy. Who wants to go out to clubs and pubs? Let’s get together to play The Button Game!
Other games I remember enjoying are:
‘Port, Starboard, Lifeboats, Guns’ was another Brownie favourite. Swab the decks! Climb the rigging! Man overboard!!
‘May I?’ My favourite game at Glenfield First School. Dolly Steps. Giant Steps. Scissors. Bunny Hops. And my favourite, Lampposts. The game where, if you were ‘mother’, you could redress the wrongs that you had suffered that day at the hands of your classmates.
‘Red Rover.’ Very popular in the Beechwood Middle School playground in the 1980s. Repeatedly banned due to children getting injured.
‘Bench Ball.’ The Button Game equivalent for Beechwood Middle School PE lessons. Much loved and always a treat to play it!
Over to you, my readers. At school, or at organised groups, whether they were official games with rules, or just random free-for-alls that you made up, what group games did you enjoy playing when you were young?
It will be interesting to see if there are any similarities or differences across places and generations, so if you feel happy to give a rough location (country/state/county) and which decade(s) you were playing these games, that would be great.
Tell us about it in the comments!
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Thank you to my sister and to my oldest friend (we met at school, aged 12, and are still the best of friends!), for their help with this article. They both have far better memories than I do!
So thank you Ruth, for confirming that I was remembering the details of the button game correctly, and for explaining the social implications of long white socks versus short white socks to me.
And thank you Kate, for helping me remember the details of ‘May I?’ and, most importantly, for finding the name!
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Bye for now! Emma
Next week…
By ‘some people’ I mean my sister. I’m both slightly shocked and incredibly proud. I’m still chuckling at how smart she was (and is)!
Never played buttons — tho o did love going thru Grandma’s button jar! Friends and I were just talking about Red Rover the other day and how fun/violent it got once 6th grade boys hit puberty 🤣 Also, growing up in Minnesota USA, winters were all about King of the Hill, with the hill being piles of snow and dirt scraped off the parking lot we called a playground. Good times! Do kids even play games anymore? They don’t know what they’re missing!
I love a button biscuit tin, my nan had one. I've never played the button game and feel bereft! We also used to play red rover at school, (Essex) regularly banned and renamed to try to fool the teachers!! (Also called bulldog) Didn't do brownies, so missed some of these magical games, have enjoyed learning some with my kids