Are you kidding? I’m so mean to me when I don’t win! WAH!!
Apparently the same place my Jr. High PE teacher was when the class decided that “throw rocks at the geek” would be a fun recreational activity. When I asked if he could at least ask them to stop (punishing was clearly out of the question) he said “I didn’t see them do it, so I can’t do anything about it”. He wasn’t impressed with the six-inch black bruise forming on my calf before both of our eyes. He offer to send me to the principles office for the period if I refused to go back out and “play”.
If an adult makes a child run around in circles until she falls down while him and his friends laugh at her, we call that abuse. If a child throws a rock a dog, we call that abuse. If an adult throws a rock at an adult we call that an assault and someone goes to jail. But when a child does the same thing to a child, that is a learning experience? Abuse does not make you any better a person when it comes from another child as it does when it comes from an adult. Abuse just fucks you up. The idea of an adult doing these things to a child sickens any decent human being, and it is no different when an adult turns their back and allows that sort of thing to happen.
Were you guys using a baseball for dodgeball/ball tag/murderball/bombardment or what? We used a big, soft rubber ball, and it wasn’t scary at all. And you didn’t have to be a big kid to win, since it was about speed and having sense to figure out the place where the ball was likely to be thrown.
**
I think some of you are being unfair to the scenario presented by our pal even sven. Bullying can have some profound effects on the development of a child and it can take years to undo the damage. Unfortunately, children don’t realize the amount of harm their words and actions can cause. Many adults don’t realize it either but unlike children they should know better. I remember a poor kid, a sophmore in high school, who broke down and cried during orchestra because he was constantly being picked on. Bullying is a serious problem and should be addressed with more then the “grow a backbone” attitude some of you have.
That said, banning tag from schools is a pretty silly idea. On the other hand tag is a pretty silly game to be playing in PE. When I was growing up tag was reserved for the playground while games like kickball, basketball, and flag football were played during PE.
Marc
even sven, I don’t think anyone here is going to disagree that ‘throwing rocks at the geek’ is a form of bullying that needs to be stopped. When I was in seventh grade I had an entire blueberry pie smashed in my face in home ec in front of the boys. Not necessarily agonizingly painful, but humiliating none the less.
However, the point at hand is the game of tag. And while many posters are being a bit hard on YOU, I fear that you are starting to turn on US, somehow framing us as supporting bullying because we don’t think school yard games should be banned.
Does that make sense?
Dodge Ball is when some people are lined up against a wall, or is inside the chalked circle, dodging balls being thrown by other kids. One group of kids are throwing, another dodging.
Bombardament is two teams throwing at and dodging from each other. Usually consisting of sides where only one team can congregate, seperated by an open area where anything goes. When one is hit, he either is out, or goes to the other team.
Bombardament is finite. One team ultimately wins.
Dodge ball is infinite. It can be played forever, assuming that when one is hit, he then trades places with a thrower.
The best way to stop bullies is to torture them and make them cry. Club them with a baseball bat when they are not looking. Not by stopping children games.
First, ball tag was different from the others in that it was more of a free-roaming game like regular tag. Dodgeball/bombardment tended to be more of a team sport and those on different teams were seperated (except in the strange against-the-wall variation I mentioned earlier).
Yes, it was a rubber ball. A big red one. It would sting if someone threw it at you from a short distance. This was especially the case in ball tag because a large kid who was “it” could corner a weak kid, get him to cower on the ground with arms in a defensive position, then drill the ball into the poor kid as hard as he could.
[Bill McNeil]Good times, good times![/Bill McNeil]
We played a sort of murderball type game in my grade school but the P. E. teacher had us use tennis balls in socks. One of those up side the head gave you pause.
In all honesty though I can’t ascribe any of my numerous problems to playing the game.
I played tag and other physical games in elementary school and they enabled me to become so formidable physically (though I was an average height-and-weight for a girl during elementary school, I was fast and TOUGH) that I could rescue other kids from bullies.
Which I did on numerous occasions, the most poignant one being the time I rescued a girl I didn’t even like who was about to get the shit beaten out of her.
This sort of thing continued all through high school, even though by the time we were teenagers, the bullying went from being mostly physical to mostly emotional. I wasn’t bullied much (beyond the occasional barb and snickers from the so-called-popular-kids that I usually returned) in high school due to my legendary temper–legendary in the fact that it was rarely seen, but when it was–whoever called it forth was usually sorry afterward. And I didn’t even beat them up, either.
Junior high was the only time I was seriously bullied, since I was the “fat girl,” and the “nerd.” I was still a good athlete then, which kept me from most physical bullying.
Thank God, despite their other deficiencies, that my parents taught me that life isn’t fair although it should be. I do my best to make life fair, giving freely with one hand, but I keep my sword hand ready because I know not everyone shares my ideas.
So many different games… Dodgeball was played in two concentric circles that were painted on the playground. People in the middle were the targets and people in the outside ring were the throwers. It starts with one thrower, and each kid who got hit had to go into the ring and become a thrower. The last one in the middle was the winner.
After a few sessions of this, you’d think you might get just a hair faster and your breath just a bit deeper and your agility might impove just a little bit. Exercise can do that.
And what kind of scary-ass place did you grow up in?
They’re going to get the VICTIM tattooed on their foreheads and go through their entire lives that way because they never learned to deal with anything unpleasant, and they were never allowed to have any emotional release through having a little reckless fun because they might get hurt.
I am SOOOOOO glad I’m never going to be a father, and that small percentage of parents who turn out cool kids who have the potential to be strong and decent adults have my complete respect.
sorry, please insert “word” between “the” and “VICTIM” in my above rants.
Sleepy typing.
The flip response to this would be “so what, are we going to ban orchestras next?”
The point being that the problem is in the bullying, not the tag. There might be some game that is so insanely conducive to bullying that it should be banned, but I don’t see tag being that game. (I would be quite happy to support a ban on “let’s throw rocks at the awkward girl” though).
A somewhat related question for those who have been the target of bullying but are now many years past it… do you think that it influenced who you are today? in a positive or negative way?
And they’ll probably sue us alot. I just feel it.
Like I said, the only way I would agree with this would be if it’s a punishment, as in, the kids weren’t behaving, so they lost the right to play tag.
I’ve already described my experience at the hands of bullies over inneutron star’s thread in GD, so I won’t go into it here. Suffice it to say it was rough. On the other hand, I don’t want schools to ban tag. Yes, teachers, playground aids, etc. should take action if they do see one kid being bullied as has been described by others, but so help me, even I remember tag as being fun. I also like the idea of kids stepping in if they see someone getting singled out and getting out of the game with that person. Then again, I usually played tag with my brothers and their friends, and yes, we played ball tag, too. So, who else played freeze tag and TV tag?
CJ
Who was actually pretty good at tag. 
Agreed. To paraphrase a popular recent cliche`, if we have to ban tag (or any other recess activity) because of fear of bullying, the bullies have won.
If they are banning tag because it harms the self-esteam of kids who are not very fast, why don’t they ban test as well. I mean, doing poorly on test must hurt stupid kids self-esteam.
Max:
I dunno what the carryover effect has been on me as an adult.
I tell you what, though. I was something of a dissapointment for the bullies at both tag and dodge-ball (we never played bombardment that I can recall) because, although I was never a small kid, I got out of the way in a real hurry when I needed to. Because I had learned that dexterity in escape was a good thing.
YMMV.
(Yes, I think banning tag is a little ludicrous.)