Policeman da da DAH!

I was telling J about our escapades last night, documented on this webpage in fact (there will be no more of that...), this morning, and mentioned we'd played Twister, which I hadn't played in forever, and that it was so much fun. J said he didn't think he'd ever played Twister. I found this astounding. But maybe it was because he was too busy playing Policeman da da da.

Once, while we were hanging out with his good friends from college, J was telling some tales from his childhood and spouted off something about "Well, when we were little and we'd play Policeman da da da..." and then kept talking as though this was totally normal. "Wait a second," we countered. "Policeman da da da?" And J just gave us blank stares like we should have known what this meant. We didn't, and all agreed it was something we needed to hear - after all, this was the kid whose mom used to wake him up in the middle of the night, tell him to get up because the family was driving to Disney World, wait until he got sufficiently excited, and then gleefully inform him she was just kidding. Surely other childhood wonders existed in young J's life.

Here's how it works: Policeman da da da is a game J played with his two younger sisters in the swimming pool. He would be the bad guy - a typical character was a stranger trying to give them candy - and the girls would scream, helpless, no one to save them. Just in time, however, J would go underwater, do a quick transformation of mindset and emerge, shouting, "Policeman da da DAH!" He turned himself into a policeman and so could save his sisters! Once he became Policeman da da da J would catch the bad guy (himself) and put the bad guy (himself) in jail, appropriately located behind the pool ladder. That's right. He'd put himself in jail. I'm hoping this innovative game will catch on here in North Carolina. I have a feeling it's gong to be a summertime favorite.