April 1: Dodgeball/Kickball

Remember gym class in grade school and on into Junior High? That's when we were able to play all of the coolest games. My favorites were dodgeball and kickball (and, of course, floor hockey). Dodgeball because there's nothing like a game where the sole goal is to chuck a ball as hard as you can at another person in the hopes it will hit them rather than them catching it. As an adult, it's lost some of its appeal, but as a kid it was the best! Kickball was a little different. To me it was always like baseball minus the bat and glove. With a much larger ball, as well. I remember having a kickball league of some sorts after school in the gym at Anderson Middle School. I think it might have been by classroom or something like that. I'm not sure if today's elementary and middle schoolers still play these same games. It wouldn't surprise me if dodgeball has been banned due to it's semi-violent nature. But, I want my kids to know the joy of playing these games that I grew up with; within reason, of course. So, this afternoon, during a short break from phone conferences, I introduced both games to my kids. We started with dodgeball. At first, the kids were missing the concept of the game. Sure, they loved throwing the ball at me, but they were a little slow on the fact that when I have the ball they need to run. Still, it was a ton of fun and some great exercise. As for kickball, both kids seemed to catch on to this one much quicker. Although, my son's timing to kick the ball after I rolled it to him was slightly off and he kept missing the kick, bringing his foot down on top of the ball and falling to the ground as a result. He seemed to get a chuckle out of it, so I let him go with it. We must have spent a half an hour switching from one game to the next until it seemed as though we had created a new game of our own called Dodgekickball (pronounced daj-kick-ball). Hmm, almost sounds Polish. There's nothing like passing down the things you learned as a kid to your own kids. In this case, they discovered two new games and we all shared a bunch of laughs.