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Red Light—Green Light And Other Games Played by Children And Murderers Alike

By Sally Dugman

Imagine being a largely innocent child as you once were, but once again and  being just again a mere child playing games without knowing of the murderous updated versions of any of them now being used. Then, how extremely shocking is the contrast?

That innocence and guiltlessness can never happen now unless children aren’t taught the truth about the ways that their joyful games have become deliberately perverted to kill others — including of children just like themselves! This entire happening, of course, is way beyond heartbreaking — this using of our innocent and fun games that way; instead it is undeniably and excessively unacceptable and atrocious!

Background: Twice a year — my parents, my two siblings and I would travel to the Syracuse-Watertown, NY area of the NorthEast to visit with relatives there since that is from whence my parents derived. What great fun!

We’d eagerly bundle into the station wagon with our little packed suitcases and books to read while traveling and while depending on the weather (such as whether a snow blizzard were taking place), we’d either read or watch scenery go flying by for the time nestled in the car  except for, of course, the expert driver my father who had an attention span of the highest order — just as excellently attentive as a hungry tiger on prowl to find his prey!

So the drive could take six to nine hours — all depending upon road and other surrounding conditions. One knew that there was variation in advance!

Further, when we got to the one set of a grandparents’ home, we’d go immediately to bed after excitedly greeting them and having a little snack. Then the next day and after breakfast, we children would be dressed in our winter outside clothing and shooed out the door where we waited for our three fairly locally living cousins to arrive shortly.

While biding my time in the interim, I would wander around the yard to see about the degree that the apple tree there had grown since I last saw it, the state of my grandmother’s gardens, the overall look of the neighborhood from the front yard and other bits of observances, and awarenesses like the smells of turkeys in the air from kitchens while being cooked in neighbors’ homes since everyone, on holiday like Thanksgiving, liked tge uniform customs and traditions to be followed at such times! How reassuring and pleasant!

Then, my cousins would show up, greet us outdoors after getting out of their own family car and we’d resume our games from our last meeting together half a year before hand. They were Red Light — Green Light, School Day (Daze) wherein one person played the teacher and everyone else played the class and whomever answered all teacherly questions correctly got to be the next teacher, and a third game called pee-pee in  the garden where a designated policeman (one person in our group of children) tried to catch as many others as he could of us pretending to urinate all over grandmother’s beautiful, although now frozen plants! … What replete imaginations we all brought to our fun activities as we made them up as we went along!

Most thrilling of all was, of course, Red Light — Green Light as one gets to to alternately run to stay warm in the frigid outdoors temperature and stand like a statue without even twitching or turning one arm, leg, neck, torso or facial expression. If fact, you’d be sent back to the running start line way behind where everyone else was if you even moved a mere modicum amount.

Then whomever reaches to touch the game leader first becomes the next game’s boss. How sensible is that?

However, I learned a few days ago a new variation of my above happily remembered  game. It’s exactly the same except running forward involves not reaching the game’s leader, but reaching a pile of food in containers like boxes and bags concerning which there are not enough of either in the heap for all who need it. 

In addition, one doesn’t get sent back to the start line for moving during the red light period moment. Instead one gets gleefully shot — whether one is a young child, a mother carrying a squirming infant, an elder ready to faint from fragility and hunger or whomever else is present in the scene.

I’ve even read that one IDF soldier excitedly told another one shooting a rifle gun at the red light moment into the starving and direly hungry, dying crowd, “I think that you got one” as he watched a person slump down to the ground. What extraordinary degree of both hatred and indifference combined can inspire such supreme glee that has as much happiness as I, myself, had as a little girl playing my games? How Utterly depraved is that! Assuredly, it is as extreme as it supremely can possibly get!

Let’s, then, try to return the game to its former form that I recognize and maybe even improve it.

Sally Dugman writes from and lives in MA, USA.

13 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

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