There are a number of strange things we did as kids that you just gotta wonder where the idea came from in the first place. Stuff like spreading Elmer's glue on the back of your hand and peeling off dry "glue skin" a while later, generating noises with body parts, and spitwads.

My brother and some friends had one trick which would cause them to briefly pass out. I'll skip the details for that one. There was the one where you have someone make a fist as tight as they can while you squeeze/rub their fist and arm to squeegee all of the blood out of it. You hold pinched fingers above the closed palm and have them open it slowly while you act like you are pulling something out of the opening fist. To the person it feels like you are pulling a string out of their hand.

Here's another you might remember. Bite down on the tips of both pinkies, so that your teeth are about in the middle of the nail. Doesn't have to be too hard, maybe on the verge of pain. After a minute or so stop biting and link them together (like a pinky tug-o-war). Now pull. Hurts, doesn't it? Yeah, great trick.

I have a theory about the origin. Hypothetically, of course. Move some rocks around, landscaping let's say, since this is all hypothetical. Accidentally crush a fingernail between a couple rocks. Now try to use that finger to move some other rocks around. There's that searing pain again, only amplified this time. How this "trick" made the leap into the collective knowledge of school kids I'll never know.

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