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    emmabrocker2Tom Scocca
    9/23/13 5:53pm

    I always love when someone who has no background in secondary education, ed policy, curriculum design, or adolescent psych talks about what schools are doing wrong.

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      bbberlinemmabrocker2
      9/23/13 6:00pm

      Look, relevant life experience has never stopped these people from having opinions on gays, military engagements, science, or economics- so why should they stop now?

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      MissNormaDesmondemmabrocker2
      9/23/13 6:03pm

      Elitist.

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    Cherith CutestoryTom Scocca
    9/23/13 5:19pm

    Ugh boys are only allowed to get out their aggression with football, hockey, soceer, dodge ball, soccer, wrestling, playing rough tag at home, video games. What is the world coming to?

    Also, little girls are fucking vicious. The idea that equalizing the sexes makes for more civility is absurd.

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      Set Fire to the Room--do it now (fiends NOT friends)Cherith Cutestory
      9/23/13 5:28pm

      "Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized."—Margaret Atwood.

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      Cherith CutestorySet Fire to the Room--do it now (fiends NOT friends)
      9/23/13 5:35pm

      Exactly! I feel like people who are concerned about this have never actually played the vicious, manipulative, Machiavellian game of house.

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    klemjohansenTom Scocca
    9/23/13 5:38pm

    When I was young, the only game we were allowed to play was called "socialization tag."

    Whenever you got tagged, you had to drop to the ground and do as many push-ups while you could as the crowd chanted "to become a man you must learn to destroy, embrace coercion, become violence." The person who was "it" when the bell rang had to scream "I hate myself and everything I am likely to become" for the game to be over.

    It was so cute when a girl tagged a guy, she had to stop in the center of the playground and say "I have bested a male at a physical task; as I am shamed, he is shamed also" after which she was to put on the dreaded "tom boy" smock, a florescent yellow traffic guard vest. You might think we would ban her, but the great thing about socialization tag is that it's inclusive- in that the game was mandatory.

    It was super fun and we all turned out totally normal. I'm not sure why namby-pamby parents get so upset about it now when I lead kids in that same game today- all because it offends their sensibilities and because I don't happen to work there or have a child who attends there.

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      Cherith Cutestoryklemjohansen
      9/23/13 6:19pm

      I miss the old days growing up in Ancient Sparta too . :(

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      BrrrrCherith Cutestory
      9/24/13 10:52am

      I don't even want to think about what freeze tag involved in ancient Sparta. Gross!

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    Steve_Buscemi's_OrthodontistTom Scocca
    9/23/13 5:08pm

    Correction:

    Circle of Friends is freeze tag meets United Nations Peacekeeper mission.

    On a side note, I miss dodgeball. It was the last time in my miserable life I felt superior to the "readers" and other sissies in my age group.

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      MalforusSteve_Buscemi's_Orthodontist
      9/23/13 5:17pm

      I miss dodgeball because it was equal parts thrilling and terrifying. Anytime a proto-pitcher or otherwise ballistic-ally gifted individual got a ball it felt like being down range of a sniper.

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      jcthreeSteve_Buscemi's_Orthodontist
      9/23/13 5:27pm

      Wall-ball or suicide? Anyone?

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    sofarTom Scocca
    9/23/13 5:58pm

    For real, though: Have you SEEN how kids these days play Red Rover (once the bloodiest of all playground games)?!

    My boyfriend and I were in a park and saw some middle schoolers lining up. "Sweet," we though. "Red Rover." And sure enough: "Red Rover, Red Rover, let Kelsey come over!" they yelled.

    We immediately became confused, however, at what happened next. Kelsey started walking over to the other side. Slowly.

    "What the eff are you DOING, Kelsey," I muttered. "You aren't even trying."

    So anyway, Kelsey ambles over to the other team, gets on her stomach and starts trying to slither under the arms of the other team. The two people above her holding hands try to stop her, but, Kelsey deftly counters by sneaking through their legs.

    I mean, I suppose this is a kinder, gentler way to play the game, but come on! Without snapped wrists and broken fingers, there is no Red Rover!

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      Cherith Cutestorysofar
      9/23/13 6:17pm

      I feel like that is more Kelsey being a strategic genius than an indictment of Red Rover as a game. I am sure most idiots still try to break through.

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      sofarCherith Cutestory
      9/23/13 6:37pm

      Well, we continued watching and all of them did that.

      Although you do make a good point that, perhaps, kids today are smarter than we were and are simply playing a different, more effective meta. Still, though ... I found positioning myself over the point where hands were linked and going dead-weight to be a most effective strategy.

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    Sparkle_MotionTom Scocca
    9/23/13 5:18pm

    Ignore Christina Hoff Sommers at your own risk.

    At the school just down the block, they make the kids play "circle of friends" — even refusing to allow the kids to call it "tag" because of that word's "bullying etymology."

    And one of the poor kids, well, he got "frozen" so close to a fence that his "friends" can't make a "circle" around him. (One of them would have to levitate, since this is a rooftop playground.)

    He's been standing, frozen and often all alone, in that corner since Tuesday of last week. War on Boys indeed.

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      Cherith CutestorySparkle_Motion
      9/23/13 5:27pm

      If only we had listened when we had the chance.

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      Sparkle_MotionCherith Cutestory
      9/23/13 5:29pm

      No kidding.

      But don't give up. I'm going to try to build some scaffolding this weekend so we can "circle" and then "unfreeze" the poor kid. Care to help?

      I imagine he has to go to the bathroom by now.

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    ThidrekrTom Scocca
    9/23/13 5:34pm

    So when middle-aged folk pine for their childhood, that's "nostalgia," with which they then proceed to bludgeon the young who have no such attachments.

    Traditions held before the middle-aged were born but after the Industrial Revolution are "old-fashioned," where they start getting idiosyncratic about what they'd still like to see around. Income tax? "Boo." Anti-immigrant nativism? "Yay."

    And then there are pre-modern traditions, which are basically all seen as "barbarism." Like praying to bejewelled saint skeletons. Nobody seems to be clamouring to go back to those "good old days." And yet all these crazy nostalgic folk never really realize that there's a long tradition of people bitching about the younger generations not being as tough as them leading to the downfall of civilization (the Romans complained about the corrupting influence of "Asiatic comforts" as they transformed from a small tribal society to a large multicultural empire), but life goes on each and every time. Today's "namby-pamby" children are going to be the cantankerous nostalgics of 2060 wondering why "today's children" aren't playing "Circle of Friends" anymore—and I'm sure the Romans would be absolutely contemptuous of "traditional tag."
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      BilliousThidrekr
      9/23/13 5:58pm

      Back in my day, a father would throw a kid into a maze just for looking at his daughter. This wasn't just any old maze either. Not one of your namby pamby corn field mazes. Who makes a maze out of food anyway? It's not much of a maze if there's no chance of starving to death. No, these mere real mazes, with 10 foot ceilings that blocked all light, horrible snakes and spiders that hung in corners waiting for you to draw near, and at the center, a minotaur!

      Back then little boys were men! And little girls were men too. At least after Hermes had his way with that tart Aphrodite.

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      SorryButYouAreWrongThidrekr
      9/23/13 6:53pm

      I like the cut of your jib.

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    destor23Tom Scocca
    9/23/13 5:14pm

    Real men play gun tag.

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      Sparkle_Motiondestor23
      9/23/13 5:21pm

      Against deer and birds and people who don't have guns.

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      postnjam12destor23
      9/23/13 5:21pm

      Gun tag is the best, except I hate the red stuff that gets everywhere and no one wants to play it again afterwards.

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    Mr. BrutTom Scocca
    9/23/13 5:17pm

    I guess no more smear the queer then.

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      Left HandshakeMr. Brut
      9/23/13 5:25pm

      AH! I hadn't thought about this game for years! I loved playing it, but could never at that age figure out why anyone would willingly pick up the ball...

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      runasone93Left Handshake
      9/23/13 10:24pm

      Because the 5 seconds before you got tackled were exhilarating!

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    cuntybawsTom Scocca
    9/23/13 5:31pm

    That's all right: we grown-ups are making sure there will be plenty of actual wars for the kids to get vigorous about when they're older.

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