Gotcha!
I just spent the past school week constantly looking over my shoulder…
Every year, for one week in March, my high school descends into chaos because of an amazing game called Gotcha.
If you sign up for Gotcha, you receive a clothespin with the name of another player on it. Your objective is to find that player and pin her.1 If you’re successful, you take her pin (with the name of the player she was trying to get) and you have a new victim to find. You’re trying to pin as many players as possible.
At the same time, someone out there has your name on a pin, and you have to avoid getting pinned or else you’re out of the game. The last person standing with the most pins is the winner.
It’s kind of crazy how all these high school students (who usually don’t care about anyone outside of their social circle) are suddenly running around to ask if someone knows the person on their pin.
I really love how some students go all out. They dedicate their time to tracking down their victims and they’re super careful so that they don’t get pinned themselves. It’s so amusing to see people creeping around, or hiding so they can jump out at their victim. It certainly makes school a lot more interesting!
I was nowhere close to winning, but I did manage to pin 4 people! (Which is 4 more than last year…) I also survived to the end of the game, but that can probably be attributed to the fact that whoever had my name was not an active player.
As I was tracking down my victims… Well, I’ve never felt so creepy and stalker-like before. I got a teacher to look up one of my victims in a student directory and show me his schedule. Then I actually hid in a stairwell so I could wait for him to walk past and start following him. It was ridiculous, but also ridiculously fun.
I cannot stress enough how awesome Gotcha is. Did/does your school ever have any crazy events like it?
1 On school property, on her clothes (not skin or hair), plus a whole bunch of other rules.
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Comments:
That sounds awesome and I would love to do that. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to win, but it would sure be fun!
I don’t think it would be possible at my school because it would turn into a riot or something crazy like that. 2,400 kids, oh no! :P
We never did anything like that at my high school, which is a shame because it sounds like so much fun! My boyfriend and his little brother had something similar at their school, though – they called it assassin and you had to stick a sticker on your ‘target’.
You lasted a lot longer than either of them ever did, though – apparently they both got out after the first or second round. :P
I think I remember you mentioning this last year. It sounds fun! My school obviously doesn’t do this, since it’s college and there are WAY too many people. Then, those of us in the same program are all in the same classes, so the game would be over in about 30 seconds, really. But yeah, it sounds cool. Like, it could be a nice way to make friends, if you pinned or were pinned by someone you didn’t know.
for a Whole School? that’s crazy! My HS only had the typical dances and club fairs. but that’s a brilliant idea for those icebreaker-type activities. I wonder how many the winner pinned.
and I wouldn’t say you were stalker-like, just resourceful. :D
That sounds like a pretty awesome game. It sounds familiar but I’m not sure why. I don’t remember playing it when I was in school. But I do love it when schools have those school-wide activities. It really gets people to meet new people and learn the names of people that they don’t normally talk to. I think I would be too shy to actually go up and pin someone, at least when I was in high school. Good luck getting 4 people!
That sounds so fun! I don’t think it would work at my school, because it’s too small. We only have 500 students, and probably only half of them would want to do it. I don’t think it would be fun with only 250 people!
My school doesn’t have anything like that, although we have this thing called Gladiators at the end of the year. It’s just a series of events like tug of war.
That’s a very interesting game! I’ve not heard of such a game, neither do we have them in the schools here. I thought it’s a good game for social interaction and getting to know one another. Maybe some people will get to know more friends via this game. It must have also been hilarious to see people around you getting stalked. LOL!
That’d be a fun game to find out people in your school you never knew existed :P I mean, I went through high school pretty much not realizing some people in lower grades even went to my school — but that’s probably ‘cause we hung out in different areas, maybe. How do they distribute the names tho?
Haha wow that sounds like such an awesome game. Would definitely participate too but would definitely feel like a stalker of some sort >_<
Sounds a bit creepy but fun at the same time. My school didn’t have that but fellow pupils would water fight and throw pennies at each other, in their own accordance. :P Just to say the penny tossing wasn’t for violence but the guys seemed to enjoy the infliction of pain. :/
Ah, my high school played that game as well. It’s sooo ridiculous to watch people running around like crazy after you’re out. We also had the rule that they had to be alone…like, you couldn’t pin them in class or anything. Did you have that rule? It makes things a lot more ridiculous.
A group I’m on the e-board for at my school recently did Gotcha (except we called it Assassins). I didn’t play, but just hearing the stories of how crazy and determined some people were to “get” their victims made me wary of ever playing it!
Haha wow. Sounds like a lot of fun. And no, my school definitely doesn’t have anything like this (it would be utter mayhem with over 5000 kids), and to the best of my belief neither do any other schools across the country :P
I didn’t get one thing though – if you lasted till the end of the game, how come you didn’t tag more than four people? :S
And btw, your blog’s been down all day. In fact, it’s down quite often during the daytime here (which I suppose would be roughly equal to nighttime in Canada).
That sounds like a crazy game. haha I don’t know that I would like playing it though. I would probably always be paranoid. :P
I’m very jealous of your school! My school would honestly never stick together to do anything like that, it’s sad. But it actually sounds like a bunch of fun…teachers approve?
That sounds really fun! :D I wish my school had stuff like that. If ever something like that comes up on campus, it’s not an ‘official’ event; it’s just a game for fun played by a group of friends. I hope that we have something like that going on in our school cause it will really be tons of fun.
Gotcha sounds fun! We have that game too, but it’s called Assassins. At one point, I thought I was going to win, but I got “pinned” before I was even close! I miss playing it now. I would love to play it again because it’s so much fun, but sometimes it can get out of hand. And you’ll be running for your life then if you get too into it. That was what happened to me. Have fun! :)
That sounds like possibly the best thing I have ever heard in my life. D: If my school did that it would be SO AMAZING. But this is the first time I’ve ever heard of anything like it. Oh gosh it sounds cool. :P Maybe I can get this to happen in college or something.
I’ve never heard of it! Sounds cool.
Lucky you! I always get sick and when I do, they last pretty long. :\ My immune system is weaksauce! :(
Yeah…I know right? But it isn’t about “feeling like P. Diddy.” I thought it’ll be an interesting title. That song is kind of getting annoying and overplayed. :\
Wow that sounds like so much fun! Wish they did that kind of stuff at our high school.
That’s probably the best school activity ever! school normally just do boring stuff like sports day, or no uniform day or something boring like that. Nothing as fun as that!
We have a really similar game here! But it’s called “Assassin”. You get the name of a person, and you have to get them alone so that you can tell them in a normal voice that they’ve been “assassinated”, and then you get their person, and so on. :P We haven’t started yet, but I’m excited for it!
I don’t remember anything quite like that when I was at school but our charity events involved most people, we used to get ourselves in lines from one side of the school to the other and see how fast we could carry something down them. You’d find loads of people in the toilets hiding from the teachers because they didn’t want to take part. Yours sounds more fun :)
We played that game a few months ago with my dorm, but it was called Assassins. But yes, it was so fun and everyone got so paranoid! We also had senior water tag our last year of high school, but it was in teams of 4-5 as opposed to everyone out for themselves.
Wow, why didn’t our school ever have anything fun like this! :P Wish I could take part in that lol, sounds like a lot of fun. And that’s so funny about feeling stalker-like! haha!
That is awesome! I wish my high school had done something like that. Then again, in high school I was anti-everything so maybe I wouldn’t have participated. Hmm, now that I’m going to be working in schools maybe, I might just have to steal this and try to get it happening one day…
That actually sounds pretty amazing. My high school NEVER did anything like that. We had pep rallies and that was about the only thing they ever did to try and involve the whole school, and usually that didn’t even get everyone excited.
That sounds like the most amazing thing ever! I wish our school did exciting things like that before we left… we attempted a 7th form prank, but it faaaailed so miserably :/ I would’ve loved to partake in Gotcha – although I’m paranoid enough as it is, I don’t think i’d be much good at watching my back effectively! But the stalking… haha, stalking… oh i could learn to be good at that ;)
Is it completely sad that I only know about the Gotcha game from the TV series Greek? Haha, it seems like so much fun!! I wish we did stuff like that in school…
That sounds like so much fun!
I think the closest thing my high school ever did to that was just give out water bottles. Because we ended up dumping water over everyone, whether we knew them or not. It was fun!
If anyone ever asks me to suggest a game, I will remember this.
Oh my goodness that sounds absolutely amazing. So much fun! I wish we did something really fun like this but I honestly can’t remember doing anything of the sort. We had pretty unique traditions but that’s about it. No fun games.
i have to agree with everyone here, this sounds like soooooo much fun i wish I could play! i want to go to your school now. honing your stalker tendencies is a good thing! lol.
one of the schools in my country did something like this before only they had to “murder” their victims so it was a lot more morbid, if you ask me. my schools usually stuck to the boring ol’ “Angel/Devil” games.. yea.