Rules is Rules

January 26, 2026

Greetings from inside the lines,

When I was a kid, there was a loose set of rules that we followed that kept a semblance of order, and sometimes prevented our version of civilization from dissolving into chaos. At the time I thought these rules would matter to me all my life.  Not because I thought much about the rest of my life, because when you’re a kid, you wake up in the morning and that is forever. 

For example, ‘Dibs’.  As in, “I call dibs on the last Oreo.”  If you say you had dibs, you claimed an inalienable right to whatever you established as dibs.  If someone else said it before you, that claim must be respected.

All manner of games sprung up on the street where I grew up. There were no referees, no parents, so we would scream prerequisites of each game.  Like: “No touchbacks.”  “Goodhue’s porch is ‘safe’.”  “Curbs are out of bounds.”  Some games could be suspended by any kid yelling, “Time!” so he could tie his shoelace.  Again. Everyone knows you can’t get tagged ‘it’ if you yelled “Time!”  Abuse of this was frowned upon and could be overruled by the majority and enforced by a ‘jam-pile’.

There were other rules, like ‘place backs’ which held your seat, or ‘shotgun’ which claimed a seat. If a seat was ‘saved’ for someone, it was an inviolate contract.  There were a lot of rules about seats, it seemed, which was ironic because if I was told to stay in a seat, I took that as a challenge to get out of it.

Some rules were really subtle.  We knew instinctively that you couldn’t play with your Matchbox cars at the same time you played with your GI Joes.  The scale is all wrong. 

There were some rules that were unspoken.  If the baseball was hit into the long grass, play was suspended, along with team loyalty.  Everyone looked for the ball.  Once the ball was found, game resumed, and no, you cannot switch teams.

There were rules about inviting the new kid in the neighborhood to whatever we were doing.  The new kid would be the outfielder, or he would be ‘it’ first, until he proved himself.  If the new kid came with rules we didn’t know, like how to start a game of Kick-the-can, we had a formal reorientation, which consisted of saying, “That’s not how you do it.”

Arguments were settled in a standard format. The preamble would be “Nuh-uh!”, and the reply would be “Yuh-huh!”  If the argument went to the point of “Fraid not!” and “Fraid so!” then arbitration was applied by a neutral third party, usually the tallest kid.

There were a few rules that mirrored the grown-up world. Taking turns. Sharing. That’s not fair. These were not the most popular rules and were usually enforced by somebody’s sister with the “I’m gonna tell” strategy. Generally, for reasons never explained, boys had a ‘No Tattling’ rule.  This would come in handy later in life when we all became gangsters.

Parents operated in a separate orbit.  We never involved them unless someone was bleeding or something caught on fire, and only then if all of our alibis were in order.  Our parents had a separate set of rules that rarely overlapped with ours.  These rules were not in writing, as far as I knew, but they seemed to be universal and enforceable in all neighborhoods.  

There were a lot of ‘Don’t’ rules.  Don’t take things.  Don’t swear. Don’t spit. Don’t go in the water until an hour after you eat.  Don’t touch that. Don’t touch each other. Don’t leave the fridge door open. Don’t be smart. 

Occasionally, we would have cookies in the house and of course we wanted to eat them, and my mom would say, “Okay, but if you eat them, then they’ll be gone,” a deeply philosophical warning.  My dad would often say, “I’ll give you something to cry about.” No kid would ever challenge the logic of this, or we would be given ‘What For’.

In or out, but close the door.  Turn off the lights.  Put it away.  Pick it up.  If you used it, put the cap back on and put it where you found it. Be back before the streetlights come on. Get down from there. Get up off the floor. Elbows off the table. No running or screaming in the house.  No swearing.  No snakes in the house.

It occurred to me, much later than it should have, that my parents might have thought that they were teaching me their rules, which I would need later when I was older. You can probably tell, I didn’t take very good notes.

It slowly dawned on me, so slowly I missed some of it, that all the rules I was loyal to when I was younger didn’t apply anymore. There is no orientation for this change.  We are expected to learn it by growing up, as if it were absorbed into us like trees get nutrients from the soil.  Grow up, adults would tell us, followed by some saying about how life isn’t fair, or nothing is free, or the only thing certain is taxes and death. Welcome to the real world. Everyone is worried, there are more reasons to be angry. Arguments seem to be created on purpose.

Of course, there are many things to keep track of as a grown-up, and all of those come with rules.  Do I claim myself as a dependent? Send thank you notes. Hold the door if the other person is within ten feet. Is it ‘capital’ or ‘capitol’? Left turn on red. No white after Labor Day.  No snakes in the house.

So just wandering around the neighborhood with your friends becomes low on the priorities. And there are all of these other changes. If there is a dog, it is more of a job than a pet.  If you get a birthday card, there is never, ever, money in it. You can have ice cream anytime you want and still you don’t have it anytime you want. 

When I was a kid, our rules seemed to be set in stone. And then I learned that grownups don’t seem to care about them at all.  In fact, I have been a grown-up now for decades, and rarely, I mean almost never, has any of my friends called Place Backs.

The rules that we thought were so important, and perhaps permanent, dissolved and in their place, these other rules grew up.  And for most of our lives, we live with those rules, because we think they are permanent and important too.  What occurs to me is that there could be this next phase of life when these grown-up rules won’t matter to us either.  When we can smile at how naïve, or how silly, we were as adults.

Perhaps it’s an evolution of sorts, and maybe at some point we just know the right things to do, even when there are no rules, no referees, no parents, no worries about our future. Maybe the rules evolve into what we know as fair and kind, and we become these new people. And we just wake up in the morning, and that is forever.

Dibs.

Hope this finds you playing by your own rules,

David

Copyright © 2026 David Smith