Like most American students in the nineties and early two-thousands, I was subjugated to the humiliation factory that was dubbed “P.E.” which we all know stands for Philistine Experimentation. In actuality it stands for “physical education,” though it wasn’t particularly educational, it was required as some way of combating the ever-looming threat of becoming a human sausage that wears ill fitting shorts. So, once a day we would be herded into the gym where we would be given some kind of activity that might get the blood pumping and minds focused on our learning of how “simile” is spelled.
Anyhow, the children of my generation were still subject to torture by way of the child killing blood sport known to the world as “dodge ball.” This “sport” has been deemed so vile and savage that, many states now ban it’s use as a way to break children, and train them to become future soldiers in the war against the non-existent flying elephants. The version of the sport I played was fairly standard in it’s rules. The class was divided into two nearly equal teams, now by equal I mean equal in numbers, not in ability. Why it wasn’t uncommon for the gym teachers to place the athletic kids across from the geeky kids and band nerds, just to see them get pummeled into dust just for their own sick entertainment.
Dodging the balls reached it’s zenith during my sixth grade year, which I spent at Oak Run state penitentiary. My three gym teachers would usually find some kind of activity for the class to perform some kind of activity that included some kind of running around. The two most popular activities were indoor base ball (which featured 30 outfielders) and of course dodge ball. So, we would play the now banned sport an average of two times a week, I’m not sure how any of us children survived the horrid onslaught which was known to emotionally ravage most of middle-America.
Unlike in the olden days when the balls used were composed of a thick rubber material which pronounced a rather loud “ffuthummmm!” whenever they made contact with a surface, whether it be a brick wall or a child’s face. Yet, when it came time for me to come of age and step into the arena of death, they had been replaced with a much softer counterpart. The balls we used were comprised of foam, and a rather thin pleather covering, which came in two colors red, and blue. After about a week of use the foam balls were very likely to be skinned through many impacts with young children’s faces and kneecaps, so they became shapeless masses of foam flying about the gymnasium.
Seeing as I wasn’t the most athletic of students, it was more often than not that I wasn’t the most effective player of the game. The foam balls were apparently manufactured in a way that only children who played baseball professionally could throw them with any accuracy or strength. Try as I might, my noodley arms were unable to project the ball in a straight line, or at a speed faster than a moseying panda bear. The rules of the game state that if a ball is thrown and caught by an opposing player before it hits the ground, the person who through the ball is out. Following this guideline, I found it much more productive to leave the throwing to the fit kids. Where as I would go on to become the world’s fifth most important Star Wars fan, they would just become regional sales managers. Chumps.
Over the course of the school year, we were bound to play dodge ball more often than a southern state feels the need succeed, the coaches felt the need to spice things up a bit. So, there would be variations of the game, where the allotted lines of moment for players was changed up, or we were all required to wear Tibetan hats while playing. The main name I remember for a variation on the game was called “Queen Bee,” wherein we would have the standard separation, but one kid on each side would be required to wear a florescent vest. As if the vest wasn’t punishment enough, it was a rule that the opposing side could only win if they hit that person with the ball.
As a whole I usually lasted fairly far into the game, as I didn’t usually throw the balls, and rarely attempted to catch them. This came to become a fairly interesting point when in that particular sixth grade class it came time to play a game of Queen Bee, where Danielle (the girl of my interest) was the queen and I was on her side of the court. The game went underway and slowly the rest of the team was eliminated and only I and Danielle were left, any twelve year olds dream come true.
The coaches decided to try and finish the game quicker by allowing the opposing side to move up to a distance were she and I were only a meter away. As we moved around trying to catch the balls being hurled at us, I had to stand in front of her so that I would absorb any accurate throw. Yet, alas! After months of being quite clumsy, I at long last was able to have a proper reflex reaction to an object being thrust at me. So I heroically dodge a ball, which whizzed past me and smacked Danielle right in the face. Super-smooth wasn’t I?
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