Cat's Cradle

Cat's cradle is a way of passing time that I picked up again recently after years of having forgotten about it. Cat's cradle is one name for games played with a loop of string and was popular a long time ago. I got back into it one night when my younger siblings were looking for something to do and my younger brother did the one cat's cradle trick he knew with a loop of yarn: he cut my hand off. I then realized that I had not played with my cat's cradle strings for a really long time so I went to my room and brought one back down to the kitchen with me. The only trick I remembered was my favorite one, which was an instant hit with my younger siblings partly because I acted silly at the appropriate moments. The trick of cutting my own head of with a piece of string met with roars of laughter as I pretended to choke then with one final jerk pulled the string off, freezing cross-eyed with my tongue out, gargling my last and starting to fall over. The immediate encore was to cut my younger brother's head off, followed by performing my younger sister's demand that I cut her head off. My mom and I were laughing because how many mothers get to hear their 5 year old daughter commanding their 19 year old brother to cut off their head and respond by saying that only he is allowed to do that and she should finish her supper before he does it again. Of course after that I taught them both how to cut their own heads off and let my younger brother try to cut mine off a couple times. After he succeeded a couple times my mom told me where I could find her book of string games so I could start refreshing my memory of patterns that I hadn't done for years. My younger brother picked up the trick for cutting his fingers off right away and I think my sister now knows it as well. When I played with my string at college during the next two days I found that at least 4 people recognized it as a game they used to know and enjoy but had forgotten about. Maybe they will relearn some of these games too since they all seemed happy to see the string patterns and be reminded of the times when they used to play them too.