Panulaan ng Diwa # 6 - Luksong Tinik (Larong Pilipino)

This poetry is part of a series to immortalize my fond memories of Filipino games of my younger years. The games I feature in this series are hardly being played by today's Filipino youth, as most of them are more inclined towards playing computer games. Luksong tinik (jumping over thorns) is a game I loved to play as a kid in the late 80's and the early 90's. It is believed to have originated from Nueva Ecija which is a neighboring province of my home town; Malolos, Bulacan.                                                                                       The game is played by two teams of equal number of players. The game play involves having the teams take turns as jumpers and thorns. The team doing thorns sits on the ground using their hands and feet as obstacles for the jumpers. Each team members from the jumpers take turns in jumping over the obstacles with the objective of not having any part of their body touch the hands or feet of competing team. The obstacle from the thorn team starts with one hand, then another hand or foot gets added each turn until all hands and feet of the thorn team members are used.                                                                                 The thorn team gets one point every time a jumper's body or clothing touches the obstacles, and the jumper team gets one point for every team member successfully jumping over the obstacles without doing so. At the end of the game the team with the most number of points, wins.