This was a silly variation of regular tag that was fairly easy to prepare for if you knew you were playing ahead of time.  The key was to wear clothes or items (watch, hair bow, etc.) of as many different colors as possible.  The person who was “it” or “Johnny” stood between the two ends of the playing area, while all the runners lined up behind the line at one end.  All the children chanted, “Johnny, may we cross the ocean?”, to which “Johnny” replied, “Only if you have on *insert color here*”.  Any child who was wearing the announced color got to stroll across the playing field at that point, usually with utter nonchalance or some kind of swagger.  If the chaser had cause to doubt that a particular child had the appropriate color on, he could request to be shown it, often giving rise to much creativity, such as brown stitching on an otherwise blue shirt or something similar.  Once the strollers were across, everyone else had to cross running and try to avoid being tagged.  Any children tagged while running across became helpers to “Johnny”, and the game continued until there was only one person left.  If all the normal colors had been called and some children were still able to cross the ocean, Johnny started calling more unusual “colors” like silver, clear, chartreuse, until everyone had to run eventually.