Why, or why, dear Lord, was this exercise in stupidity so savored by adults?
Oh, and did you say ‘dodgeball’? Well, they tried that. Sure, let’s go. What can go wrong? Well, plenty! Here’s what happened: Rule 1—Boys can only throw at boys (constant boy on girl harassment with associated puddles of tears). Girls can throw at boys, though, which usually meant girls won. This in turn led to separate boys-only games.
Rule 2–No using a girl as a shield. It didn’t take long for this tactic to surface, given Rule #1
Rule 3– No Head Hunting (Crying boy in nurse office with bruised cheek). Principal starting to watch some gym classes after this one.
Rule 4: No throwing once someone was down (if you tripped, you were hammered). So, sometimes you got to get up and keep playing if you were haplessly pelted whilst you were down. There was something disturbing about us youngsters eager to hit someone when they were down.
Rule 5—no punching at an incoming ball (again, crying child in nurse’s office with red welt) –the ball recoil was like a baseball home run. And those were just the rules I remember 50 years on. The multitude of rules made the ‘game’ lifeless. Sometimes so many ‘throwers’ were disciplined, there were more ‘dodgers’ in the middle than ball throwers. If there truly was a way to make dodge ball ‘nice’, then that was what we played. I’m sure girls found it pleasant, but looking back, it just seemed adults’ pathetically attempting a transformation of a cruel game into something that was sunshine and flowers.
I’ll give our teacher one thing–he recognized who our class bully was early on. In dodge ball, throwing at the bully placed you in danger of physical harm to limbs or face. The teacher would sometimes just take a ball and throw it at the bully’s legs–‘Okay, time for you to sit down and let others have a chance.’ Our bully stood and trembled with fury for a few seconds. But he had learned that anything more than a few seconds would lead to further punishment or the teacher humiliating him by asking if he wanted to fight.