Frank's Sketchbook Entry of the Day

Nostalgia is a dangerous thing: very easy to get lost in it. Nonetheless, there are times when it cannot be ignored. Gnip Gnop was a game I had as a kid. It was fun, required spastic, frantic, frenetic motion, and then at some point, someone yells, "I win!" and it's over.

Years later, while in graduate school, I had a few friends of the same era who understood the reference to gnip-gnop, when describing any event involving throwing things back and forth, which then devolves into a free-for-all of spastic, frantic, frenetic motion, until all of whatever objects being thrown, perhaps starting with koosh-balls, then moving on to bean bags, and finally to couch cusions or generally anything, end up on one person's "side" and then ends with a similar "I win!" Though, sometimes it ends by a time limit (or fatigue), rather than the strict victory condition of the origial game. But there were only 6 balls in play in the original game.

Recently, my friend Catherine gave me a cut-out from a box from a gnip-gnop game. I know not how she came by this, perhaps a visit home to the ancestral lands. But I must admit to smiling in the glow of memories from the '70s and '90s of real and impromptu gnip-gnop games. Thus, I indulge in a moment of nostalgia. But the game need not end.

And for those unaware, gnip-gnop is 'ping-pong' spelled backwards, as that was what was being flung back and forth in the original game.