Games

Its funny what men as boys think of as 'fun.' I remember as a kid, on those rare rainy days, usually in the summer, when the gutter pan filled with water out front in the street. It filled so deep you could float a 2x4 your own twelve-year-old hands built, adding small blocks of wood to the center of that three foot board and nailing them down with big 8 penny nails and floating it as an aircraft carrier down the gutter, all the while finding rocks to lob at it as pretend mortar rounds. If you could hit it hard enough and it tipped over, the twelve year old thought, you count it as a sinking. I never tipped one over, causing me to resort to getting handfuls of loose street gravel and strafing the ship or standing over it and dropping them while holding the rocks close to my face and looking straight down, like a bomb site. 

In high school, out by the handball courts, we played dodge ball with baseballs. We didn't play that a lot. 

'Smear the Queer' was the politically incorrect term for, geez-don't even know what to call what we were playing in fifth grade. Whoever had the ball got, well, speared, by the other twenty kids. Dale Denmen was the best, along with John Battersby. There was another kid who was the toughest at the game. I don't remember his name but he had one of those eyebrows that kind of stuck out, like a caveman and his eyes were kind of far apart. he had the unique ability to see around corners before he got to the corner. I think that was the 'queer' part meaning 'strange'. 'Smear the Strange Kid', yeah. I broke his nose while we played. I ducked my head and hit his nose. He bled like I hit an artery. It was pretty cool.

Speaking of, there was another kid my freshmen year who wanted to grow up and be a Yo-Yo demonstrator. He said they got paid to travel the world and demo Yo-Yo's. He would yo-yo to and from class and at lunch, demonstrated what he could do. 

How about NASCAR?  Had another friend in grade school who worked for his father at his garage and could tell you what any car was by the look of their brake lights on the back of the car. He could tell you the year and the make. On weekends, that's what he did-raced cars as a thirteen year old. You can't tell me any of us watch NASCAR or the Indy 500 and don't secretly wish for a real bad wreck? You know, one that has no injuries, everyone is fine, but the cars disintegrates and flips up into the audience, all of whom, of course, escape the falling, flaming vehicle because they had all gone to the snack bar at the same time.

This weekend is the Highland Games in Phoenix. My ancestors from Scotland, did this. I know they did. How do I know? Because they come from a country where the sponsor of the event is a scotch distillery. When they fought, they used clubs and sharpened iron. They lashed rocks to sticks and went to war. Their women fought with them because, well, frankly, have you seen any of those women? They can birth a child, cook dinner, and cut your face off and make a hat out of it before the day was through. Throwing pounds of iron for sport just seems right for us.

I think we coddle our kids. I do. We need to make sure we don't buy anything they can swallow, cut themselves on, cause any form of body fluid leakage. Look, slinging ten pounds of iron and seeing how far it goes is just what boys and some girls like to do. There is something in our brains that requires us to do just that. When we had the space program, it kind of filled that need-'lets see how if we can throw $1-billion worth of low bids to a far planet, moon, or star and see how close we can get. Throwing a rock is good for us.  It teaches fluid dynamics, some calculus, trajectory analysis, all the while you get to sling iron--not steal---not compressed zinc, but iron, a big piece of rusting metal from Mother Earth.

I'm not saying we go out and buy our kids guns. Heck, that's as bad as toys that talk. Anyone can get a gun and with a little practice, shoot an animal, like a lion on the Serengeti, and make a rug out it. Now, if one was to do that with, lets say, a dull butter knife, now you got some good TV. That would be like the number one show ever. Of course, each week, you would have to get a new contestant.

I'll stick with a 2x4 and some 8 pennies.