“Want to play a game?” Mom would ask.

The game turned out to be us pinching and pulling the skin on the tops of our hands in a perpetual dog pile of claw hands.  She’d pull/pinch the skin on the top of my right hand with her right hand.  While she held the pinch, I put my left hand over her right hand to pinch her skin and hold it while she put her left hand over my left hand and pinched hard.  I’d take my right hand from the bottom, and put it over her left hand to pinch, and so on.  This game never lasted long, as Mom, smiling, would speed up the process until we ended with a big collapsed hand pile.

This game was not fun.  It was painful.  Mom pinched hard and enthusiastically.  Maybe it was invented for bored Taiwanese schoolchildren trapped on public transit.