We all have little games linked to songs or rhymes that we remember from childhood. The artist played one such game he played while attending elementary school, and he would be walking with his brothers somewhere in the small city they lived.
The game was to avoid stepping on any cracks that were in the cement sidewalk. Skyler used to sing out, “Step on a crack, break our mother’s back!” Children play a slight variation of the game all over North America, particularly the South. Since, as brothers, we all had the same mother, getting other women involved was no point. But there was a lot of hopping and jumping to do as we raced down our sidewalks. Towns in Quebec have extreme differences in day and night temperatures in Spring and Fall, which can severely break up the cement and wreak havoc with a smooth street surface.
We can often find a nugget of truth buried in children’s ritualized play that passed on over generations. Steeping on a crack leading to your mother’s injury suggests a fear that shadows our daily lives: small, inconsequential actions or decisions can unfairly and disproportionately impact our well-being and destiny.
It also suggests in the linking of the words “crack” and “back” that for all the remarkable mimetic power of language, it is merely a tool with a built-in arbitrariness that does not necessarily echo life.
