Odds and Ends

This Cup Thing

60 Comments

I don’t know where it originates but every fundy camp, youth group, sunday school outing, or picnic inevitably featured a group of girls in jean skirts doing this. I’ve never seen it done anywhere else.

(Edit: Apparently it’s done all kinds of other places which I’m just now learning about. Thanks for the info, folks!)

I showed my daughters how to do it. They think I’m incredibly talented now.

60 thoughts on “This Cup Thing”

    1. Too much exposure of the mammaries!!!! I m so embarrassed as a man…..they are to only be used for feeding very young babies. When my wife and I reproduced our offspring, we always “did it” fully clothed so as not to dirty my mind….

      1. This wanton display of female flesh was so offensive that I had to watch it three times just to be sure I was as offended as I thought I was.

      2. Remember, it’s never your fault as the man, it’s her fault for having mammaries & she should be apologizing for defrauding you & causing you to stumble… 🙂

        1. By the way, Anna Kendrick’s buscuit-making technique is wrong for several reasons (at least according to what my grandmother taught me).

  4. The funny thing about this, is that it originated from a movie called Pitch Perfect. Not a fundy approved movie at all! Lol #hypocrites

    But all these girls probably snuck the movie and since their parents only watch FOX news, they just think the girls are insanely talented for thinking up this amazing game!

    1. It didn’t originate there. Pitch Perfect was released in 2012. I’ve been seeing this since the late 80’s.

      It is interesting to see it in a secular setting, though.

  5. I’ve seen it at my secular school’s summer day camp as well. Also, just girls. Everyone does the cup stacking game, however.

    1. It really is your duty to warn them of the evil literally lurking in their camps.

  9. Teh heh… You posted my forum thread. Gawrsh.

    Yep, we did this. Like I said in the forum, this is what happens when people are stuck on a campus without being able to watch real TV or date the real way.

  10. I actually haven’t done this before, but now I want to. Truth is, I just want my kids to think I’m cool. 😛

  11. I don’t really get what’s difficult or cool about tapping a cup on the floor or on a table.

    Maybe it’s a Fundy thing.

    1. My kids are still pretty little and definitely NOT fundy. That’s probably why they think it’s cool. 😉

  13. Rich Mullins did it a good while back with his song “screen door”. I studied up on it a bit for a rhythm unit I taught. Best I could tell it started as a game (without music) at Girl Scout camps. Music was added later….first I could find was Mullins and Screendoor.

    1. Dear Jay Croft:

      That’s what I assumed. As I had it figured, the ‘one cup’ routine was the closest fundy kids could come to anything with worldly appearances…

      Christian Socialist

  16. I was first introduced to the Kendrick song (the one in the diner) when I browsed the blog of one of SFL’s occasional contributors. I’d never heard of her until last year, and thought the cup thing was such a hoot I played it for the wife and kids on the ol’ trusty laptop.

    I had not idea it was a fundy thing. At least it wasn’t a thing in Bubba Jay circles…as far as I knew, I think…maybe.

    B.R.1

  17. I know in the early 80’s the teens at my not-fundy church used to do it, but they passed the cups as they did it. So it was clap-a-clap-a-hit-a-clap-a pick=up-cup put-it-down hit-table-ahit-ahit-a clap-a-clap a pass the cup along, and then start over with the new cup. It took a certain amount of team work to keep all the cups moving around the table for any length of time.

  18. Even without the Pitch Perfect version, isn’t there just a bit to much rhythm going on? You know, any non-hymnal rhythm might lead to.. well, we all know what “rock and roll” REALLY means (at least according to my former fundy pastor it does)

    2. Absolutely non-Fundy. At :27 there’s a guitar clearly labeled “Jack Daniel’s.”

      I’m not up on booze names, but isn’t that an American bourbon, not an Irish product?

  22. Cups is big among the middle schoolers at Unitarian Universalist family summer camp we attend each year. Which is about as far as fundy middle school as you can get.

    Except for CUUPS, which is even further.

  23. The cups “game” produces a beat…how is it possibly acceptable among the IFB? People could start moving around to the beat.

  24. This cup game is obviously a ploy of the devil to get the hearts and minds of our young people. If he can get them to accept a seemingly innocent game they will then be indoctrinated into accepting and enjoying the beat of rock music. This will, of course, invariably lead to illicit activities between the genders destroying your young people and the generations to come. Cups themselves are obviously evil because they naturally promote the flesh and should be banned from all homes and churches. From now on all liquid shall be consumed from bowls.

  26. Years ago I went to a Rich Mullins concert at church (not fundy, the more liberal one I had switched to). He opened his first set with his people doing the cups on the table thing, they looked like they were having fun and it was fun to watch. They were all dressed like ragamuffins.

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