Whither Hiding?

I remember the day I got a copy (which cost me three dollars in nickels & four hundred saved wrappers of beef jerky - & believe me, my entire bedroom smelled like an abattoir by the time I saved up four hundred of those plastic casings) of the Official Rules Of The Game Of Hide & Seek. My friends had been debating those rules for some time, including what true & eternal rights are granted when one is "it" as well as the boundaries of where it was proper to "hide." Though we didn't have the "internet" then, we certainly knew how to make shit up, so all summer long we argued & cajoled &, even though some of us had by that time discovered masturbation, we spent long afternoons debating the rules of what we truly thought was the ultimate in childhood games.

The Official Rules Of The Game Of Hide & Seek was first published in London in 1745 by a distant ancestor of the actor Martin Sheen. Strangely enough, the writer was also a distant ancestor of George Gobel, but there is no evidence that Martin Sheen & George Gobel are related. Suffice it to say it was very difficult being British in 1745. (1746, however, was apparently a very good year for being British.) The writer's name was Edmund "Fancy Pants" Mathersbykite. A shy & reserved son of a diseased earl, Mathersbykite was tortured by his older siblings with their capriciousness as regards childhood games. Indeed, Mathersbykite's oldest sibling, Clive, is credited with being not only the creator of dodgeball, but also the first person to be hanged for killing someone in a dodgeball game. Young Edmund grew up furious with the way his brothers & his sister seemed incapable of consistency in any single game. If Edmund had not been blessed with obsessive/compulsive disorder (in those days known as "being prissy"), he might not have been able to bring any sort of sense to childhood games.

Two earlier treatises, "The Importance Of Falling Down When You've Been Shot" & "No Take Backs," were written while he was locked in a closet during a game of hide & seek that was a pretext for cruelty. They were self-published when Edmund was seventeen, but were lost when his sister said she wanted to read every copy to tell him what she thought but instead used them for toilet paper for the family manor in Wales. Perhaps because sadism he was subjected to when the game of hide & seek was played, Edmund turned his attention to that subject. He would spend nearly the rest of his life defining the game. Which sounds impressive, except he was killed when he was twenty-two by his younger brother Canute when their kite strings got tangled & Canute angrily wrapped Edmund in the strings. A gust of wind & some nearby cliffs spelled the end for the great rules maker about whom Hoyle once said, "Edmund who?"

As a child, I found The Official Rules Of The Game Of Hide & Seek to be a strangely long book (seventeen hundred pages) & suprisingly free of pictures. It was also filled with footnotes in Greek. In addition, Mathersbykite's tendency to write in iambic pentameter was a little off-putting, especially, as my friend Gus noted, "It don't rhyme." Nonetheless, I began the read the book &, after only a few pages, realized it was utterly worthless. My friends & I, totally bummed about having to return to school after wasting a summer worrying about the rules to a dumb game, beat each other up & went swimming.

I wouldn't have as much fun again until I became an adult & became embroiled in the war on sailing. But that's another story for a different time.

I hope you understand now why the theme of Self Help Radio this week is "hiding."

The "Song Of The Day": more Indiepop A To Z. Song # 3. By the Scottish indiepop group Aberfeldy. From their debut record Young Forever. It's called Vegetarian Restaurant & it's sweet & pretty. I'll remove it on or around March 14, 2007 - but probably later, since it'll be South By Southwest at the time & I probably won't be blogging much.