OLLIE-OLLIE-OXEN-FREE

Summer is a time I remember playing games in the yard and around the neighborhood when I was a kid (not so much now). In a variety of those games as the light would begin to fade everyone would be called in with the words "Ollie-ollie-oxen-free."

A favorite writer of mine is Harry Middleton who wrote the following in his book The Bright Country:

And Dr. Mutzpah closed her notebook and said to me what she so often said to me.
"There, there," said Dr. Mutzpah.
"There, there...
"Well, so you've met a real life swami, have you? In all of my years of practice, I can't say I've met even one. So, tell me, has the swami any words of enlightenment?"
"No, but his parrot has," I said.
"The same ones all the time.
"OLLIE-OLLIE-OXEN-FREE!"
Swami Bill's parrot kept yelling "OLLIE-OLLIE-OXEN-FREE" in Swami Bill's crepitating voice for the same reason that Odell Euclid was always saying, "Roll out Jeremy," or that Dr. Lilly Mutpah so often leaned close to me saying, "There, there..." as I sat in the deep warm folds of that black chair in her office.
"OLLIE-OLLIE-OXEN-FREE" was Swami Bill's way of commenting, thorugh his stuffed parrot's vanished yellow beak and dead, cherry red glass eyes, on how silly life can be, how fragile human beings are. It was his way of coping with life's regular doses of torment and misery and pain. Whenever he met another human being, no matter the circumstances, Swami Bill would shake that person's hand generously. Then Bill would cover his mouth with one hand, work the parrot's wires with the other.
As the parrot flapped it's dingy wings, it screamed:
"OLLIE-OLLIE-OXEN-FREE."
"Pass it on.
"Pass it on."
Almost every human being knows the phrase, remembers it from his childhood days of endless play and games. It is what one child would yell out when the game was over and everything was okay, when everyone was safe from being tagged, chased, noticed, tormented, ridiculed, tricked, safe from being IT! Whenever you heard "OLLIE-OLLIE-OXEN-FREE," it was the all clear. You could come out of hiding, stop being afraid.
Swami Bill and his stuffed parrot with the cold red eyes were sounding for all clear, too, letting grown up human beings know they could let go, stop hiding, come back out into the sunshine.