You know, my school years were probably as rough as anyone’s here; I’ve been known to claim they tried to kill me a couple of times. I also remember, unfortunately, being chased down by a mob of kids om 4th grade, pinned against a door, and having my pants pulled down in front of half the kids on the playground, not to mention one of the town’s main streets. That said, this is ridiculous!
Some of my best memories of recess involve playing tag and chase as a kid, building dams on a 3 inch wide creek and figuring out how to make the best dam (what can I say – my father’s an engineer! :rolleyes: ), playing 4-Square and generally running amok. Speaking as a woman, I can also honestly say that the worst forms of cruelty weren’t the ones this foolish attempt at over-protectiveness will prevent. The subtle, social games of “Today you’re my friend; tomorrow you’re not” or “I won’t be your friend because you won’t do exactly what I tell you” were far worse and did far more damage. I’ve a feeling that the girls referred to in the article the OP linked to may be rather good at those games, although that could be residual paranoia.
Let kids play! Let them grow, think, and learn! Yes, they’ll sometimes make mistakes and get hurt; making mistakes is one way you learn not to make mistakes. We worry about how obese our country is becoming, yet now some folks are trying to stop kids from enjoying the sheer joy of running around and being a bit wild. When I was a kid, I hated running track, but I loved playing tag. Yes, both involved running, but tag was a lot more freeform and more fun! (Hmmm . . . . If dodgeball for adults is catching on, why not tag?) One of my brothers’ and my favorite games as kids was B-O-M-B where we’d go out to the side of the road after dark, wait until a car came along, and then run back to base before the car’s headlights passed the point where base was. One point of pride was to go as far as you could and cut getting back to base as close as you could. We’d hurdle hedges, yell, scream, and be completely doomed if a neighbor decided to go out for the evening. We also had a dozen variations of tag, including TV Tag in which it was ruled Welcome Back, Carter was not a television show (the show’s name was Welcome Back, Kotter, for the youngsters among us).
It’s reaaly not fair to blame this on lawsuits. In California, tort filings are down 45 percent in the past ten years. It seems to be based more on an irrational fear of those unspecified bad parents and their sleazeball lawyers. If it were actually related to the school’s likelihood of getting sued, the rules would have gone into effect 15 to 20 years ago, when lawsuits were on the rise.
Of course, when we played it we were lucky to have five channels. I don’t know if TV Tag would even be possible in this era of 1000-channel cable and satellite service.
Equipment: Get a nice thick leather belt; the longer and heavier the better.
How to Play: To start, someone is designated to “Hide the Belt” in a certain area, like a half a city block, or a neighborhood street, or at school yard during recess, etc. The rest of the players close their eyes/turn around, etc. while standing at base (safe area…will become very important later).
The hider hides the belt wherever they choose and announces to the players to start.
Players scurry off start looking for the belt, getting getting clues from the hider. Clues such as “Chris is getting warmer…Mike is ice cold…and Joe is Burning up.”
Now, the tension mounts because a few people are getting closer and the person who finds the belt gets to chase everyone down and beat the crap out of them until they make it back to base.
Somtimes the belt would be hidden under a car, maybe near the wheel well, and the seeker who is very close to finding the belt and getting the “Hot” cues may or may not know where it’s at. They can pretend to fumble and act clueless and keep other nearby active and looking. Once baited in, the seeker comes out swinging and might have trapped others from the base.
This game was best played at night on the street somewhere, but we played in our school yard during lunch recess.
The joys of being raised Catholic in Philadelphia.
Exactly what happened…most of the lawsuits did happen over ten years ago, this state has been overly PC since the 1990s. There’s only scraps left to sue over when it comes to school playground equipment so now you have lawsuits dealing with how kids play games, without equipment being the issue. Lawsuit abuse has been an issue for 10-20+ years in California.
