Nine states have eliminated dodgeball from their gym programs. I want you to take a moment and just contemplate that fact.
Do you seriously think that anyone in local government, any professor at Stevens, any department head at any school, any of the staffers at this paper could’ve gotten where they are today without dodgeball?
I’ll go so far as to say dodgeball was a vital ingredient in the stew that made me the well-adjusted adult I am today. And now a bunch of soft, quaking, vegetarian, holier-than-thou, self-righteous, kelp-cooking do-gooders want to eliminate this staple of rite of passage for millions.
Shameful. So many times I woke up as a kid full of rage, ready to heap abuse on any living thing, to retaliate unmercifully for any perceived slight, only to have that anger released safely within the sphere of one white or red rubber ball. Dodgeball is more than just a valve – it teaches important skills like stealth, quick reflexes, deaking, ducking, and most of all, how to accept pain and bounce back. Yes, some kids, perhaps a bit slow integrating the game’s concept into their motor skills, get clobbered. Okay, continuously clobbered. And some others become molded to a self-image of clobberer. I’ll bet none of these participants are on Paxil, Zoloft or Lithium, none have physical or psychological scars, none wet the bed.
When I knocked someone’s glasses off or made him double up with a hit to the groin, I was making a statement about not only who I was, but what this country represents. How many schoolyard fights were avoided by using this fine game as an outlet, exhausting destructive urges before they reached boiling point? Don’t mention concussions unless you’re prepared to denigrate soccer with its violent heading of the ball.
Millions are spent on Nerf bats so people can pound each other without inflicting serious damage. Whither tradition in the person of our beloved dodgeball?
Plus they wish to eliminate musical chairs because it fosters extreme competitiveness. And they want to cut Simon Says, because that promotes deception. HBO’s Real Sports is examining these atrocities in a calm, disinterested manner, and I want to slug Bryant Gumbel through the screen. How can we maintain our position in the world’s economy without those two games? Look at Trump, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Gates, look at Oprah. Is it so hard to imagine successful people throwing their butts down in some empty chair before some loser gets there? Name one VIP, one giant in our society, who wasn’t superb in Simon Says. Why not eliminate charades because it fosters over-dependence on teamwork at the expense of individuality? Or chop off Scrabble because it devalues consonants.
Worse, this is what they propose to replace that stuff with – I’m not making this up – jump rope without a rope so no kid will miss, line dancing, square dancing, balloon tossing, hoop jumping – are you sick yet? Let me say that one big reason some of us have a Fear of Intimacy relates back to our square dancing experience in gym, where invariably the person next to us had sweaty palms or a sweaty lower back that sent shivers up our collective spines.
And they never let you shower after square dancing, unlike dodgeball.
Petitions have to be drawn up soon. Don’t kid yourselves. Your kids will be coming home filled with rage and bottled up angst after 40 minutes of trying to deal with controlling a balloon, and my God, have you watched grown people line dance? – Joe Del Priore