Who gets to do it? Who has to do it?

Since the beginning of time, at least since the beginning of making choices, people have cast lots. Early on, the tools were animals’ thigh bones and fallen branches of trees and rocks. Then, came axes and sieges, bows and arrows, and guns. Always searching for making decisions that give advantage to self and community while withholding decision making power from the not-self and the community of others. Now, though there certainly are wars and violence, children, those who do not typically kill each other, have developed more civilized means for making choices. Choice can be either wanting to get the most or best or first or not wanting to get the least or worst or last. Examples, in the first category, getting the swing first or a turn on the bike first or that last cookie or the cupcake with the most icing. In the second, having to bat last or to have “little sister” on your side or being the one who has to clean up a mess before the grownups see it. These tactics for casting lots include:

-    One potato, two potato – going around in a circle bumping off fists until the first one out has to do the unpleasant thing or the last person with a fist out gets to do the good thing.
-    Drawing straws – starting with a straw for each person, one person shortens all the straws but one, holding all straws with the thumb so that they all extend the same distance above the hand, participants take turns pulling a straw; the person who gets the longest straw wins.
-    Enie, meanie, miney, mo – similar to the one potato strategy but with some control held by the person doing the fist bumping who can hit each fist separately per syllable or can hit a fist for a word rather than syllable.
-    Guess a number between one and ten and who’s closet to the number the leader has in mind win or furthest number away loses.
-    Flipping a coin – “heads I win, tails you lose!” That last is a joke.

I know this is much more actual factual than most of my writing. But … oh, look … over there. A soapbox. It seems to me now that grownups make all the rules and dictate who gets the advantage or disadvantage at the pivot points. I think kids learned a lot of life skills when they were left on their own more often. I sometimes say that I grew up at a time when we didn’t bother the grownups all that much and they didn’t bother us all that much.

— Marmar