Is four square what we used to call box ball over here? (not that I even remember how to play)
Never did that lieu but if your bathroom tales are any indication, I’ll bet you’ve had to caulk your toilet back in place a buncha times. 
And this is a bad thing because . . . ?
Well - I don’t think it is healthy for one’s mother to turn that particular shade of red and because I was the one stuck mopping up the water afterwards since it all suddenly became my fault…
Hi Mia. How are you? How are your kids? Things going well? I think four square and box ball would be pretty much the same. There’s a big square (painted on the playground) divided up into four smaller squares and you bounce the ball from your square to another square and if they miss it you mock them for being a spazz. If they don’t miss it, they get to bounce it to another square in hopes of mocking that square defender. There might be some sort of rules and stuff, but all the four square squares were on the girls’ side of the playground and the nuns wouldn’t let us over to play. Mean assed nuns.
The girls had the four squares and the tetherballs and hopscotch. The boys’ side of the playground had a kickball diamond. You’d think this would be pretty cool, but we weren’t allowed to play kickball because it was RIGHT BY THE STREET and the stupid nuns figured (rightly) we’d kick the ball into the street and get run over by a car chasing it. We weren’t allowed to play bumper cars or tag or touch (slam you into the blacktop) football or anything good. And there was always a nun walking the line between the girls and the boys to make sure we didn’t talk to the Others. I think they were afraid we’d get Ideas.
Yeah, like we’d get Ideas. Either we were too young to have Ideas or we weren’t and we didn’t have anymore room in our sweaty little brains for more Ideas. It’s amazing no one gazed across the No Man’s Land Patrolled by Nuns at the girls in their skirts and knee socks and just had their heads explode. Or other parts. Get Ideas. Stupid mean assed nuns.
The girls didn’t even play with their four squares or tetherballs either. (Hopscotch was just stupid.) They just sat around and did homework and junk. They should have been sent out by the street.
Everyone has to pray for my grill. It’s got Grill Cancer and I don’t think super glue nor caulk is going to help much. I was going to clean up my grill and use it last night, but I saw the horror that is my burner. Huge gaping holes rusted through it. And it’s only six years old! (If I were to try to light it, how huge would the fireball be spewing from the rusted out burner be? You really want me to try it and find out, don’t you? Just because you’d think it would make a funny story. Well it ain’t gonna happen! The Little Woman said so.)
The good news is the basic grill body parts, the big bottom part and the lid, are still fine. Cast aluminum isn’t known for it’s rusting. So I should be able to get replacement parts and fix it all up. Then if there’s a huge fireball it won’t be my fault and I could tell you all about it.
-Rue. (too safe for a fireball)
Heh! Just think Rue I woulda probably had my sweaty little brain and other parts explode from being on the boys side of the playground. Well that and I woulda wanted to landscape it. We didn’t have separate sides of the playground at my school. We played mixed tetherball. Dodge balls was a boys game however. The girls didn’t want to play. They skipped rope a lot. Nobody ever played four square.
FWOOSH
That’s how big the fireball woulda been if ya had lit it. I have a new grill. It’s cast aluminum with copper burners. It also has a side burner. It’s set up to have a rotisserie but I didn’t get it cause it’s optional. Perhaps it will be (perhaps, heck! y’all know I will buy it sooner or later) a future purchase. Here’s hoping you get yer new grill guts soon so’s you can burn a whole buncha meat. Or roast marshmallows.
Wow - I thnk my grill might have cancer, too. I had to move it yesterday so I could pull the trailer out of the garage and under where the grill had been, I saw a pile of rusty black bits of stuff. It never occurred to me that it could be cancer, but now that you mention it, Rue, that’s the only explanation.
I wonder if it’s well enough to survive a trip to Maryland?? Poor, cancer-ridden CharBroil. 
FCM don’t move it to Maryland. That way FCD (or whichever of you two is the grill freak ) has the perfect opportunity to buy a brand new big honking cast aluminum with copper burners grill. There ain’t nothin’ like it I tell ya!
Thank God Rue explained that four square thing, because I’d never heard of it. And remember kids, co-ed tetherball leads to rampant immorality and the decline of civilization.
swampbear’s post has helped me finally understand why gay guys don’t tend to go out for football. Showering after practice would be torture, wouldn’t it? That’d be like me showering with the girls’ volleyball team. Something would sure explode, I guarantee.
Ex as it so happens, I did play football. I also took PE. A whole lotta repressed hormonal urges went on there I tell ya! Though I did occasionally get to unleash some of those urges but I won’t go into that cause I don’t want your head to explode from TMI.
[sub]I was overly fond of the teammate pat on the butt following a good play. What? I had to get at least one in![/sub]
Our grill had cancer and despite a total burner replacement surgery by Parallax a couple years ago the cancer returned and this time it was terminal. We had one of those little grills with wooden side slats to rest the plate and stuff on. Well the cancer spread to the wood. And the igniter never worked after the first week. And did I say it was a little grill? Perfect for a young couple starting out but now we’ve bred and have birthday parties that involve grilling for 20 and opted not to do a second surgery but to follow swampy’s excellent advice and get a bigger grill with a side burner for cooking extra stuff and little lights for grilling in the dark!
I never played four square. I did play kickball but I think I did it wrong because I always ended up playing what should have been called faceball. I hated jumprope. We played chase the boys too - swampy could have played with us 
Mostly though I hid at recess so I could stay inside and read. I was geeky that way…
I remember now. We used to draw the lines with chalk and my older brother would cheat and make the boxes HUGE so that it would be easier for him to win against us.
Rue, the kids are doing good. I’m home with them now, after being layed off (which is nothing new in publishing). I’m figuring out just how good (and bad) they can really be. Can’t wait for it to stop raining and get them out of the house. This way I can just tie them up in the yard. (just kiddin) Hopefully, Mr. Mouse and I can swing this until the middle guy goes to kindergarten in Sept.
I don’t think you’ll get a fire ball if you light the grill, it might just disperse from lack of pressure, right? On second thought, don’t try it. We like your eyebrows where they are.
’nookie I dunno. After reading what you did to your dolls, I mighta been afraid to play chase with ya for fear you’d catch me and then decide I needed my ears pierced too. :eek:
Don’t you just love how bigger grills make a so much better and bigger FWOOSH sound?
Aww Swampy, you’d be on my team helping me chace the boys! Then you could help me pierce their ears 
Well, err… umm… it might not be their ears I’d wanna pierce ya know.
[sub]Stop thinking that! Gawd you people have such gutter minds![/sub] 
I played hurtball in youth group, when I was a teenager. And floor hockey, with as much high-sticking as possible. The girls were a lot more vicious than the guys.
Oh, what is hurtball? Two metal garbage cans for goals, because the don’t usually break. Two teams of anywhere between five and fifty players. A ball. Go! Get the ball in the other team’s garbage can!
There were a lot of pile-ups. I have vague memories of being crushed under ten other teenagers, hugging the ball and shrieking at the top of my lungs.
What?
If we ever have a MMP Dopefest, it absolutely must include a game of hurt ball. That and a grill with lots of charcoal and lighter fluid so we can have a great big ol’ FWOOSH
Four square involved a lot more than just bouncing the ball over to the next square–you had to bounce it in a creative way. That was how you got people to “miss”. Say you bounced the ball under your leg. You would miss if the ball bounced in your square first, or on the line or didn’t bounce in the right square. The person you bounced to missed if they didn’t catch the ball after one bounce or if they incorrectly bounce the ball to the next person (i.e. didn’t do it under the leg). You continued to bounce that way until someone missed, then that person was out and the next person started a new bounce (over the head, behind the back, etc). Sometimes a new person would rotate in at this point, or the game continued with three players, last one standing was the winner. Strategy started with what size ball was chosen to play with and who occupied which squares. And yes, I was a four square champion and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
I also played kickball, softball and various chase games with the boys (the nuns at my Catholic school apparently knew that we’d get ideas regardless–instead, the play ground was divided by classes, first to fourth on one side, fifth to eighth on the other, i.e. the big kids’ and the little kids’ sides). We played dodge ball in the gym on rainy days and during PE, and sometimes Red Rover as well. Yes, officially sanctioned injury-promoting games were the norm. We were tougher in those days, not like today’s kids with their protective gear and safe, non-competitive, esteem-boosting games. Blood, sweat and tears–the fluids of my youth.
Swampy, honey, put down the matches. That’s right, put down the matches and step away from the grill, and no one gets hurt.
Didn’t your mommy teach you not to play with fire?
I have a confession to make. I never really used a grill. Not on my own, at least. I’ve had some dealings with a little hibatchi and my old boyfriend cooked up dinner on a gas grill once in a while, but I had little to do with the cooking part of the process.
But I must say, the FWOOSH factor seems kind of fun. So, should I get a grill? Could I be a girl with a grill? And is it acceptable to get a gas grill or am I a wimp if I don’t want to mess around with charcoal or lighter fluid and chimney starters?