White Rabbit!

The game is called "White Rabbit!"

My junior high youth director taught it to me. His college professor taught it to him. We played it year-round through junior high and high school - then, after graduating from high school, I ended up going to the same college as my youth director. The professor who had taught him was still there and he was still teaching his students the game.

Here's how you play:

1.) On the first of every month, through whatever means you can think of, you have to be the first person to say "White Rabbit!" to whoever else is playing.

That's it. It's pretty simple.

But we found a way to turn it into a giant and raucous ordeal. It was a given that on the eve of every new month, we'd be out collecting white forks, then stabbing them into whoever's yard, spelling-out W-H-I-T-E R-A-B-B-I-T !, or lugging around a giant poster of a white rabbit that would get passed back and forth between us. Or, if we were all together at the stroke of midnight, there'd be a flurry of quick and directed declarations - whiterabbitwhiterabbitwhiterabbit... And because it picked up where it left off every month, there was never a sense that someone had won, at least not beyond the notion that "I got you this month!"

How many years has it been since we've played? It must be going on ten. Are we too old to play silly games? Too tired to run around in the middle of the night? Maybe. Probably.

It's sometimes hard to see the signs for what they are, for indicators that you, too, are getting old, that you are no different than your elders.

Because I resist the idea I'm getting old, and because I'm feeling nostalgic now, and because it's the first of the month, let me leave you with this... White Rabbit!