Tag

My daughter came home from school the other day with fantastic news. She played tag at recess. And the day before that, she played freeze tag.

That really shouldn't be a big deal. In fact, news like that should make me wonder if something is wrong with me if that's the most exciting news I hear. But thanks to a bunch of morons around the country, tag for a seven-year-old is a reason to celebrate.

A school in Colorado banned tag at the beginning of this school year. Other schools have done the same thing in the past, but you would think at some point, all the schools still allowing tag would remember how much we made fun of the schools that banned the game and think twice before they made such a stupid decision.

And the latest school to ban tag is called Discovery Canyon Campus, so this really shocks me because you would think a school named after a TV station that glorifies shark attacks might have better judgment about something as wonderful as tag.

Who is the wuss who started this whole anti-tag agenda? The school in Colorado only needed two parents to complain before they made a decision. Two parents get to make everyone else into wimps? Those people should seriously be the first victims in a good, old-fashioned game of Smear the Queer.

You remember that, right? I'm not trying to slur any specific group when I talk about that game because when we played Smear the Queer, civil rights were far from the top of the agenda. Beating the crap out of someone was pretty much the only thing on our minds. And we did it for no other reason than they happened to have the ball at that particular point and time.

And when I say we did it, I mean they did it to me because I was the short kid with the big mouth on the playground so I got my share of beatdowns.

Somehow, I managed to survive all of that without litigation. That fact alone should pretty much rule out anyone in my age bracket whining to the principal about their kid feeling picked on.

I had four older brothers. I weighed 50 freaking pounds in fifth grade. I wore glasses. I mouthed off. And we had recess on blacktop, usually far away from the watchful eyes of the nuns.

Sometimes, we would play tackle football on that blacktop. In our dress shirts and ties. I even remember one time when we used a day off to play football at one of the local public schools. Eventually, the kids we knew from the public school filtered out, and we had a kind of grudge match.

I think we won because another game was played the next time we had free time during the school year and the public school kids made sure to bring all the guys who had failed a few grades. The brother of one of my best friends went home with a broken leg or torn knee ligaments or something like that. No one complained. No one called the police. No one tried to get football banned.

We played on our broken legs and loved it.

I didn't want to resort to clichés like that, but you people trying to ruin the fun for my daughter and her friends made me.

Luckily, the world still has good people in it, like my nephew's former gym teacher. The administration told him that he couldn't include Dodgeball in gym class. So he let the kids play "Evasion Ball." The rules are pretty much the same, except it's called Evasion Ball, not Dodgeball. This man should get the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I love that we live in a small town that really doesn't have that many jumpy, elitists, ultra-sensitive parents. I like to think that most parents of kids in our elementary school want their kids to get chased around the playground because it will teach them a lesson.

My daughter doesn't just get an old-school experience at school, she can have the same kind of fun I used to have at a playground near our house.

She can slide down a real metal slide. You know, the kind that you can grill a chicken on in the middle of summer. She goes down the damn thing wearing shorts in the middle of July. That's the way American kids should play.

When she's done on the Slide of Death, she can go play on one of the large steel climbing things. I really don't know how to describe them except they are made from steel bars and kids climb them. Sure, they could fall, especially when they climb in the summer just wearing flip-flops, but I haven't seen anyone fall yet so I figure they are pretty safe.

And really, don't you want to hang out with a kid who can survive a dangerous climb more than a kid who is afraid to play tag?

Brian Shea is probably enjoying a beer in his basement right now. You can contact him at columns@regularguycolumn.com.