DOUBLE DUTCH (JUMP ROPE)

Basically, Double Dutch is a rope skipping exercise played when two ropes are turned in eggbeater fashion. While the ropes are turned, a third person jumps within

        In these dog days of summer, growing up in New York my favourite passtime was to jump double dutch with my best friend Denielle and some other neighborhood girls. Now in my still young age (36) not one rope I can witness twirling in the neighborhoods. Cause if I did surely glimpse one I would quickly park and ask for a few jumps in return of me doing a turn of the ropes also. I don't even know where the kids go during the summer, except for the privileged ones that can afford camps/ or the under priveleged ones that receive some sort of voucher to attend camps. Now a days kids are cooped up in the damn house on some sort of technology driven activity getting no form of physical excercise, eating all the damn food and making a mess of the house....oh yes I'm taking about mine they surely pushing my buttons daily.

       Long donkey years ago we would beg the telephone man for some wire to twirl as our rope. Which they all glady gace us. In these future times I dont even spot a verizon technician. I really hope in the near future I can teach my 10 yr old twins, and 16 yr old this fine art of jumping on concrete and twirling till your arms feel like it's gonna pop off
 LOL



HISTORY::
traces the probable origins to ancient Phoenician, Egyptian and Chinese ropemakers. They plied their craft at ropewalks - spaces 900 feet or more in length - usually near seaports. With a bunch of hemp around their waists and two strands attached to the wheel, the ropemakers walked backwards, twisting the rope into uniformity. As the runners traveled the cluttered floors supplying the spinners with hemp, they had to jump the twisting rope. To make their deliveries, they needed quick feet, lithe bodies and good eye perception.

It is possible that at these ancient rope-works the basic framework of Double Dutch evolved. In all likelihood, the rope spinners, runners and their families patched together a leisure time activity from their work. The strand-over-strand turning movement of the spinners, the footwork of the runners evolved into the game. Thereafter, it was passed from generation to generation.

—

The Dutch settlers brought the game to the Hudson River trading town of New Amsterdam (now New York City). When the English arrived and saw the children playing their game, they called it Double Dutch. The game has since grown over the years, particularly in urban areas. It became a favorite pastime to sing rhymes while turning and jumping. During World War II, the game was often played on the sidewalks of New York. By the late 1950s the radio music boom dominated urban America and the lack of recreational areas in close proximity to apartment buildings had made the game nearly extinct.