I love tag. 

I hate dodgeball.

When I was a kid, and we tagged, we tackled.  The tagee stayed TAGGED.

We played midnight hide-and-seek; the goal-keeper was a huge black Lab who raced us for the goal ladder, and knocked us down in the dark.

I invented one of the most fierce games on the planet — bicycle polo.  My mother wouldn’t let us play it with croquet mallets, but that didn’t prevent us from kicking each other black and blue.  We all had our own goals.  I got 17 points one summer.  ALL Summer.

We blindfolded each other and raced around on a cliff until my sister went over (she survived).

We threw each other into the surf in the middle of February.  30 miles north of Seattle.

We swung out on a rope swing over a nettle-filled gully.  Nobody fell in (although we all got cracked in the head by the huge hard knot when we’d jumped off and it swung back).

I think that proves we weren’t sissies.

BUT –

I despise organized sports.  They’re all about adult egos and keeping kids controlled. 

Dodgeball was invented by angry adults with a streak of bullying.

I’m an artist; you can imagine how coaches viewed me and my friends.  We refused to take part in pep rallies.  We sat quietly in the upper bleachers, where we had been forced to sit, reading, until we were allowed our own study hall.  Where we studied.

I recently shut up an abusive mouthy coach at a little league meet when he saw me re-setting a camera he knew could take videos.  I circled around his game once in a while to let him suspect that any more drill-sergeant act with the little girls, and he was going up on YouTube.com 

I hate bullies.  And I’ve got a video camera.