‘Droodles” was a syndicated feature created by a comedian named Roger Price. “Droodle” means a doodle drawing plus a riddle. A doodle drawing was a square box containing a few abstract-like picture elements in three concentric circle shapes and a caption giving a humorous explanation of what the picture meant.
Droodles appeared in newspapers, paperbacks and some were even found on walls.
These droodles first appeared when I was a freshman in high school (1953-4), and the idea was to guess an apt caption for the picture, and anything a person dubbed the picture was not incorrect.
The challenge was to brainstorm as many ideas as possible and then choose one caption from the list of ideas.
When I played the game with my pals, we would try to dream up the most ridiculous answers rather than the sanest answers. Most of our answers fell into the nonsense category.
Droodles were so successful that Price developed a series of books, and a televised droodle-based game was also created.
The game show was short-lived, but I watched it on NBC each week. The idea was for celebrities like Carl Reiner to try to identify captions for droodles sent by viewers or sketched by Roger Price.
If a droodle sent in by a viewer couldn’t be captioned by the celebrity panel, the viewer would receive a prize.
I never sent in a droodle, but I certainly had a lot of laughs watching the celebrities become befuddled.
Sometimes it was apparent that the panel members were on the verge of saying something off-color, but they always caught themselves before they slipped.
Because droodling was so popular, some of my buddies and I drew them in our notebooks.
When my algebra teacher had seen a number of these drawings, he told us that droodles were fine because they stimulated thought and creativity, and that they also improved group thinking. He said droodles would stimulate problem-solving skills.
I hoped we would be able to spend class time stimulating our minds with droodles, but that was not to be. The teacher’s brief lecture on the topic was the last time I ever heard comments about droodles being used in algebra class. He also warned us about the consequences we would face if we were caught droodling.
One time my friend Bob and I got caught swapping droodles during English class, and the teacher threw our art work in the trash can and threatened us with after-school activities of a non-humorous nature.
I spent time after supper drawing droodles, and my mother didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t doing homework and was wasting my time drawing what she called “moronic” pictures. I argued that drawing droodles was mentally stimulating, but my words fell on deaf ears.
Droodles were a fun fad of my youth, and like many things that kids found interesting in those days, they have faded into the sunset only to be replaced by other fads that have come and gone.
What will be tomorrow’s “in” thing?
John Stanger is a lifelong resident of Oak Park, a 1957 graduate of OPRF High School, married with three grown children and five grandchildren, and a retired English professor (Elmhurst College). Living two miles from where he grew up, he hasn’t gotten far in 76 years.