Thursday, December 15, 2011

The Razor Wire Chronicles: Dodge Ball is Alive and Well

 The house of detention where I am am temporarily incarcerated and employed eight or more hours a day five days a week may be the only place in North America where people still get to throw volleyballs and basketballs at each other. The entire court is only about sixty feet long so the balls still have a lot of velocity. Play is fierce and frantic. It may the only time during the day when the residents can openly express aggression.

Some of the residents who cannot dominate in other areas of milieu life and otherwise don't "succeed" within the level system and other rules find 20 or 30 minutes of success. Of course there is the downside that like tag, dodgeball teaches youth how to pick off the weak and the slow.

Strangely enough, youth who to use the local vernacular, "suck" dodgeball still play it with abandon. They are often the first pegged by the rapid fire onslaught but it's a momentary escaped from the mundane and I think they consciously or unconsciously recognize that. At least when a ball is hurled at them they are getting some attention.

In America beyond the walls, whole committees of parents organize to remove dodgeball from PE. Maybe that's a good thing. But as this boomer one day away from 50 ponders these things I just have to remember that I survived dodgeball and somehow not completely avoiding pain, risk and injury in my childhood may have made me a better person that knows how to duck.

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