How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself (6 page)

Chest
is just the way you think.

Nut
is just what you'd expect. Use your forehead.

And I expect that without my telling you, you have the brains to know that you have to lean over when you're
doing
chest
and
nut
so that the knife sticks into the ground, not you. But since I'm not sure whether you have the brains or not, I'll tell you. Well, what do you know? I already did.

Now the next thing in mumbly-peg is Wind The Clock. You hold the tip of the blade between your thumb and index finger. With the index finger and next finger of your other hand, you hit the handle of the knife so that the knife whirls around in the air and sticks in the ground. This one is played standing up and is pretty tough to do. The reason I don't tell you how many times the knife whirls around in the air before it sticks in the ground is because I don't know. And if I did know, it would be different for me and for you and for your friend Charlie, because we're all different heights.

Next comes Spank The Baby. This is very much like Wind The Clock, and some kids used to do one or the other, and they used to call it one or the other. We did both. What we called Spank The Baby was to put the handle of the knife in your left hand with the blade pointing toward the right hand. Hit the blade with the index finger of your right hand so it flips up and over and in.

The next one we did was called Johnny Jump the Fence. For this you stick the knife in the ground to start; that's Johnny. You put your left hand down on the ground; that's the fence. To make Johnny jump the fence you hit the knife handle with the same two fingers you used to Spank The Baby, the knife flies up in the air, over your hand and
into the ground, and Johnny jumps the fence.

If you've never played mumbly-peg before, you'll think this is impossible. I'm not sure I could do it right now, because I haven't played mumbly-peg in a long time,
²
although there are a lot of things I do as a grownup that I'd rather play mumbly-peg than, but when I was a kid, I could do it, and so could the other kids. It's a tough one, though, maybe the toughest one in the whole game. Now here is where, after you've missed a couple of times, you'll
want to have another try, and sometimes it's a good idea—but just remember you'll have to go all the way back to the very first thing. I used to, more often than not, take a chance on this. My friend Mitch practically never did. He grew up to be a lawyer, and I grew up to be a writer, and to this day, when I think it's time to take a chance on something, I have to go see Mitch and have him tell me whether it's a good thing to take a chance on.

The next-to-last thing in mumbly-peg is simply to flip it over your shoulder and have it stick in the ground. When I say “simply,” I mean it's simple to talk about. It's hard to do.

The very last thing you do in mumbly-peg is to spell O-U-T, out.

To make the “O,” you make your thumb and index finger of one hand into a circle and drop the knife through. (I know this is just like “through the well,” but it's an “O,” too.)

To make the “U,” make the same fingers into a “U” and drop it through.

To make the “T,” take the knife flat on the palm of one hand with the point facing the ends of your fingers, hold out the other hand palm down, and bring the hand with the knife up and over so that the hand slaps the back of the other hand, the knife goes over and into the ground, crossing the “T.” I know that sounds complicated, but look at picture 20, and if you're still not sure, get your father to show you, and if you're still not sure, try it with a pencil first until you get the idea. That might not be a bad idea to try with any of the things in mumbly-peg you're not sure of from my description.

Now, there may be one or two things I left out, but I don't think so. But if there are, stick them in the list according to how tough they are: the tougher, the further along in the list.

I said at the beginning of the book, the things in the book are things you can do all by yourself. Now mumbly-peg is a game to play with other kids. There can be two or three or four or five. More than that, it really takes too much time for the knife to go around.

But it's also a game you can play by yourself. And the rules still hold. If you miss, and take another chance and miss again, go all the way back to the beginning. As I said, a Scout knife is good to play mumbly-peg with, but you can really play with any knife. The only thing is, if it's a knife with a p blade, watch what you're doing, even more carefully than with a Scout knife.

Those people are around again, telling me how
they
played mumbly-peg. Okay, they called Wind the Clock “Slice the Cheese,” and I told them that on my block Slice the Cheese was something entirely different, and it had nothing to do with slicing, cheese, or mumbly-peg. I feel
sure your father will show you Slice the Cheese, or maybe he calls it Slice the Ham, but I don't know how happy you'll be to learn it. And some other people tell me instead of doing O, U, T is out, the way we did it, they said O as they flipped the knife off their shoulder, U as they flipped it off the elbow, and T as they flipped it off their wrist. It seems to me some kids I knew used to do it that way, too.

Now, maybe you want to know why they call it mumbly-peg. Well, we never knew why when we were kids. It was called mumbly-peg because that was its name, like your name is Marmaduke. Much later on, I found out why. Some places, when they played, at the end of the game they cut a wooden peg the length of the winner's little finger, and sharpened it. The peg, that is, not the finger. Then each player in the game got to hit the peg with the handle of the knife, holding it by the blade, using it as a hammer. I have been told each player got to hit the peg twice, though some people tell me it was figured out in some involved way they no longer remember. In any case, you hit the peg into the ground, and the loser had to pull it out with his teeth. Of course, if you got the peg far enough into the ground, the loser had to eat a little dirt to get at the peg, and chances are when he got his mouth full of dirt, he mumbled
something
—just what, I would not care
to say. So, he mumbled the peg, and the game was called mumbly-peg.