Evil Childrens Game That I May Have Had Something To Do With: BOF

When I was in elementary school I hung out with a lot of the same people I hang out with now. Clearly they're all stalking me. Actually we all just ended up going to the same schools (and now we're all in college.)

Anyhow, fifth grade was a time to invent a lot of stuff. We made up several games, some more cruel than others. The least harmful of these games was "wall-ball" which had about three thousand complicated rules all with stupid names that meant we spent a lot of time yelling stupid things like "NO ACIES!" and "YOU'RE OUT, NO POPPIES!"

The MOST harmful game we came up with was called "BOF."

It started out as being called "Black Out," which was the phrase you yelled when you wanted to get rid or something, like the unwanted carrot sticks in your Lunchables or a clod of dirt-ridden grass that you had just torn from the ground and thrown at your friend (or enemy. whatever.) Saying "BLACK OUT!" ensured that they couldn't just throw it right back at you and be done with it, because those were the rules and the rules were god.

A loophole of the game, though, was that "black out!" didn't mean you couldn't throw that clod of grass at yet ANOTHER friend (or enemy, whatever.) and running off, safe from the clod of grass forever. For the first clod-throwing brat to be SURE that the clod stayed with the person he or she (or I, whatever) originally threw it at, they had to be sure to say "BLACK OUT, FOREVER!" meaning that the person could not dump the unwanted object on yet another unsuspecting person.

'Black Out' became 'Black Out Forever' which became 'B.O.F,' (pronounced "boff.")

BOF quickly became a way to make fun of undesired kids, as most games do. How this happened? Instead of sticking someone with a clod of grass or a half-eaten string cheese, you'd BOF a person. This consisted of wiping your hand on said unwanted person, or nudging into them, and then proceeding to "BOF" their germs onto someone else.

We did this a lot. We did it so much that the practice of it followed us well into middle school.

One day in 6th grade History class, we were BOF-ing this kid named Devin. He was an okay kid but for some reason we had all chosen to pick on him. He got BOF-ed, and BOF-ed, and BOF-ed again and again.

The teacher noticed and sent him out on an "errand" so that she could tell us all to stop BOF-ing him without him having to be embarrassed. Of course when he came back it was obvious what had happened, and 30+ kids sat in an uncomfortable silence, all mentally BOF-ing the crap out of that poor kid.