Sunday, May 3, 2009

Dodge ball!!

You haven't truly lived until you have experienced the sheer chaos and animal abandon that goes on during a game of sixth grade dodge ball.  I am sure you have all played dodge ball before.  You remember it, where there was a hard red rubber ball and the huge boys in the school would troll along line dividing the gym floor, and the teams in two.  They were waiting for a chance to nail you with that stinking ball with all the force they could muster.  I can still remember what it felt like to be hit by that red ball.  I remember the sound as it smacked against my bare skin with the force of a Mack truck.  I remember the checkerboard welt that it left.  Talk about PTSD!

Dodge ball now, is nothing like that.  They have gotten rid of the hard red rubber ball.  They now use purple foam balls.  Great! you may say, they have come to their senses.  Well, they don't just use one ball anymore,  they use thirty.  This new dodge ball cannot be effectively played with any less than forty students.  Forty students and thirty purple balls.  The rules are, if you are hit, you are out, unless you catch it.  Another change is, you are allowed to go to the 'yellow' line.  This line extends about ten feet in the opposing teams territory.  As the students get out, they line up on either side of the teacher until someone makes a basket on the opposing side, then their team all returns to the floor.  If the teacher yells jail break, they all go in. 

It is sheer chaos.  Purple missiles fly back and forth across the room, looking like a purple sideways snow storm, or hail storm would be more like it. The noise level is deafening.  This is actually an advantage though, because it drowns out the voices of the three or four students who are inevitably standing around the teacher,  plying for a Solomon decision about a horrible injustice that has just happened to them and they are 'not really out'.  I just shake by head cup my ear, and mouth  "I can't hear you".  With a sad shrug, I then yell..."Jailbreak".  Problem solved.

After a long day of watching dangerous, deafening, chaotic 6th grade dodge ball, I have come to one conclusion, I am getting old.j0174948

2 comments:

Mike said...

o yes the night sweats i still get thursday nights in antisipation of the onsloght i know is comming on doge ball day. you cant leave out wall dodge ball can we say chicken shoot i acualy think my back problems stemm from an atempt to save my life wail playing that game.

Hokanson Family said...

You failed to mention that if you hit someone in the face you are out. I got a lot of people out because they hit me in the face. Now that I think about it probably wasn't an accident. On that note picthers shouldn't be allowed to play they break glasses.