It was not until my late teens that it occurred to me that I was not cut out to be a Chicken in a Basket. You have no idea how traumatic it is to be the perpetually Basket-less Chicken. The newly Basket-less Chicken screams, “Open the basket!” and so on.

The It runs inside a Basket, leaving another Chicken, usually the slowest and clumsiest, Basket-less. The one Chicken left without a Basket is designated “It.” She screams, “Open the basket!” whereupon the Baskets let go of each other’s hands and the Chickens dash to other Baskets. The Baskets form a circle by holding hands, and the Chicken stands inside the circle. You form groups of three, and in every group two players are Baskets, and one player the Chicken. The mechanics of “Open the Basket” are as follows.

But the game that really caused my teeth to chatter was a seemingly innocuous one called “Open the Basket.” I was spectacularly awful at games: always first to be hit in “touching ball,” always first to fall in Chinese garter. It was not so much the teachers who scared me, although Sister Leticia in Prep had the basilisk’s talent for turning children to stone with a single look, or the lessons, which I being a nerd actually enjoyed, but the games. I was terrified of school, and had in fact dropped out of nursery school for a month. I had no idea what was going on, but I wasn’t complaining-I was happy to not be in school. There was nothing on TV either, and for some reason my mother was glued to the radio, constantly turning the knob and listening for announcements. Twenty-two years ago yesterday, there were no classes. Excerpt from the author’s ‘Twisted’ 25th anniversary book

Twisted by Jessica Zafra