Sharkboy and I are walking up Church Street and we pass a woman outside an old office building yanking on a string that went up to a third floor window. I thought was just an old banner rope from Prides Gone By, but apparently it’s a doorbell of sorts! How very archaic!
I said, “I now know where to play ‘Nicky Nicky Nine Doors’ on Church Street.”
“What’s that?” asks Sharkboy.
“I’m sure you have a variation on this kid’s game, whatever you called it in Quebec: ring the bell, run off peeing your pants laughing.”
“Yeah, we called it ‘Ring the Bell and Run Off Peeing Our Pants Laughing.” He then went on to explain that he had a reverse game while living in Montreal. From the saftey of his apartment, he could use the two way intercom to comment on people’s attire and sexuality as they walked by. And it was all the more funnier when you messed with the masculine/femine articles. Oh those distinct society Quebecois!
I’m sure you all, my 5 or 6 readers, use to call this bell-ringing game something else?
9 thoughts on “Ring the Bell!”
uh…that would be “Northern”, with an “N”…
“Doorbell ditch”: Morthern California, early 70s.
i always knew it as nnnd, but we didn’t have any neighbours where i grew up (thankfully).
Apparently “nicky nicky nine doors� is a Canadianism. It’s in the Canadian Oxford and Katherine Barber talked about it last year in a presentation.
http://blog.fawny.org/2005/01/29/lexemes/#OED:li-165
I had never heard of it, nor did I know what it was until I looked it up (and read this posting).
In Chicago and suburbs during the 70’s it was called “Ding Dong Ditch”.
Growing up in Edmonton in the ’70s it was called “knock a door ginger”. Don’t ask me why.
Nicky Nicky Nine Doors is what we North Bayites called it too.
ring and run
Nicky Nicky Nine Doors is what the kids call it in Lucan Ontario.
. . . but, like most French expressions, the translation of Nicky Nicky Nine Doors being “Ring the Bell and Run off Peeing Our Pants Laughing” is so much longer than the English.