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IN DEFENSE OF DODGE BALL, BY SCOTT (SCOTTIE) MACMILLIAN, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS DRAGON MASTER, LEVEL 8,
AND HIGH-PRICED SUPER LAWYER
By Kennedy Weible
I have recently become aware - as I sit here behind my enormous desk at my super high paying job as a lawyer - that many schools throughout the country have been removing dodge ball from their physical education curriculum. Some parents, it seems, have decided that the game preys on the weak, and ostracizes those who are completely devoid of coordination. To those mothers who have finally come out and spoken I say: Bite your tongues, she-devils!
I myself was not particularly inclined towards physical education in grade school or high school. My true arena was the classroom. My weapons: facts and reason. Unfortunately facts and reason don't amount to crap when Josh Ramsey pegs you with a lacrosse ball from across the cafeteria and you end up with ice tea all over your crotch, (last I heard, Josh had become an alcoholic, lost custody of his kids, and filed bankruptcy. Got what you deserved didn't you, Ass-wad!)
My friends were equally unfortunate in the realm of physical competition. Kevin threw like a girl - we all did but Kevin actually made this kind of girlish, whining noise when he released whatever he was throwing - and James couldn't run for more than ten feet at a time without losing his breath and passing out. Poor Marcus had to wear an eye-patch all through high school to repair what his mom thought was weak vision but turned out to just be a lazy eye. Jeremy Brody and Jon Love used to hold him down, stretch the patch out by the elastic band, and let it snap back into Marcus' face. Marcus (who was always a little too sensitive for his own good) would begin to cry, sending his questionable eye into a creepy sort of wobble. Convinced he was about to have a seizure, Jeremy and Jon would let him up.
Gym was no picnic. I was constantly mocked for the supportive brace I had to wear in order to pick up anything heavier than a basketball. Our sadistic Coach - Coach Broom - paid these mockings no heed, leaving my tormentors free to torment. As a matter of fact, he even referred to my brace (which was a purely medical device) as a "girdle" in front of the entire class. The first time he said it was during the second week of ninth grade, and for the next four years, my name outside of my small circle of friends would be Girdy. (Coach Broom, consequently was hit by a car during football practice when Ms. St. James the biology teacher - who was a little drunk after finding out her husband had been seeing an orthodontist behind her back - jumped the curb around the teacher's parking lot and careened onto the football field. Coach Broom can't walk now and has his meals spoon-fed to him by his daughter.)
Dodge ball, however, was the one sport - or game or whatever - in which I could compete. I discovered my ability by accident after Charlie Harville (that idiot is an architect now, proving there is no true justice in this world) stole my twelve-sided die as I walked through the halls with Marcus. I had only recently become a Dungeons and Dragons level eight Dragon Master and the envy of my friends. As I walked, and Marcus bumped, down the hall (the eye-patch robbed him of depth perception) Charlie Harville, that nutsack, snatched the die from my hand and ran off with it. Actually first he threw it at us and managed to hit me in the ear, then he ran off with it. This wasn't an unprecedented occurrence. Things like this happened all the time. Oh well. There was nothing to do but pull Marcus out of the way before he ran into the trophy case, and continue on our way to gym.
Gym class began with the normal stretches. James got a nosebleed during the jumping jacks and had to go to the nurse and Kevin was pantsed at least three times while we tried to touch our toes. "Left leg over your right and bend. Now, right leg over your left and bend," Coach Broom bellowed like a moron.
Then dodge ball began. I had never paid the sport any heed since I was always targeted to be one of the first ones out, and generally was, right behind Marcus, who's otiose eye-patch and halved peripheral vision made him a lamb for the slaughter. This, however, was not to be one of those days. As soon as that ass, Coach Broom, blew the whistle to begin I felt something hard hit me in the stomach, bouncing off my brace. It was my twelve-sided die. Charlie Harville (really! an architect! I hope one of his own buildings collapses with him inside) had hit me with my own die and was yelling that I was out. Everyone was laughing. Coach Broom blew that whistle that I always hoped would somehow choke him, and yelled, "Charlie, that doesn't count, whatever it was," then, seeing me staring at my own blue die lying on the gym floor he yelled, "walk it off, pansy. It hit your girdle anyway, it couldn't have hurt that bad." I cursed God at the injustice of it all.
Coach Asshole blew the whistle to resume the game and the balls flew at my head, but something was different. I was different. Seething with rage, I began to dodge.
It came naturally. I had been trying to avoid flying objects since the fourth grade when Mike Goodall hit me with a trashcan lid after my pants fell down at the spring carnival. I floated above the balls. I squeezed into the narrow passageways created by two balls flying towards me at once. I danced across our side of the gym, lighter than air, until I was the only member of my team left. This proved to be a problem since I could neither catch nor throw and was therefore unable to lessen the number of my adversaries. But I was untouchable. For fifteen minutes, they threw, and I dodged. Marcus cheered me on from the sidelines. James, still pale and weak from his nosebleed, raised a defiant fist in support. Kevin began to weep at the beauty of what he was seeing. Then Jeremy Brody and Jon Love picked Marcus up and threw him at me. Marcus hurtled towards me like a skinny, flying pirate (Jon Love actually got shot a year ago when he attempted to rob a gas station. You hear that Marcus! Shot!) Distracted, as I was, by the balls coming in from my left, I never saw Marcus coming. We ended up in a heap on the gym floor while the last of the balls rained down on us from above.
Coach Dickhead blew his whistle and called the game a draw. "You can't get him out and he can't get any of you out so it’s a draw," he declared (I swear, like Solomon this guy.)
Charlie Harville stole my die again after class (I heard he mounted it to his bong like some perverse trophy of misery. I mean, c'mon, an architect?)
Those days of dodge ball were my only moments. Our only moments. They weren't just mine. They belonged to Marcus and Kevin and James as well. Last month I took a case against Jeremy Brody, sued him for fraud and embezzlement, and landed his ass in jail to be anally raped for the next thirteen to eighteen months. Those were some of the happiest moments I have ever known, but they paled in comparison to what I see as a moral victory over my childhood oppressors, by turning their game of dodge ball against them. The freedom to dodge stands out as the only moments in gym class that felt normal for me. I implore you, don't deny others the same opportunity.
AROUND THE WORLD IN THREE RELATIONSHIPS
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