Play ball!

In an effort to enjoy the wonderful fall day on Saturday, Joe and I played a little basketball together. Unfortunately, we had to do this with a football, as we did not have a basketball. We could have used a Frisbee, but once we realized that we are both much more accurate with a football than a Frisbee, we tossed it aside. In fact, we may never play Frisbee again, as it generally involves too much exercise. We have played a few rounds of Frisbee Golf in our time, which involves throwing a disc blindly into a great collection of trees, where it is immediately swallowed like some sort of offering, leaving you to tread through the woods calling softly "Here, Frisbee disc, here Frisbee disc." As a game, Frisbee Golf has its limits, but it's a great way to see nature.

But back to our game of basketball/football. We quickly decided that dribbling a football also has its limits, and so we repaired to a game of football. Our version of football is perhaps not what you are used to seeing. For starters, since my aim is most accurate at short distances, we stood about ten feet from each other when we were throwing the ball. As you may have perhaps surmised, we are not big on a lot of running around when we engage in sports, so this also cut down on the amount of energy we had to exert. In fact, our version of football involves very little running, although to vary things a bit, we do try to throw the ball to one side of the other player every now and then, but this rarely involves moving more than one step in either direction.

At one point I bent over to throw the ball to him from between my legs. (We had some discussion on what this play is called, and decided upon "watermeloning.") This gets the player disoriented, which is good for the other player, although it does increase the chances that the person catching it will have to actually move from his position in order to catch the ball, which may be wildly off course due to the thrower's disorientation.

"Hike!" I yelled, as much as my upside-down position would let me yell.

"No," he said as he caught the ball, "I'm supposed to say 'hike.' "

"But I'm throwing the ball," I said, "so I should say 'Hike,' as in 'Take a hike and get the ball.' "

"You don't say it," he insisted.

"Fine," I said, "next time I'll yell 'Fore!' "

Lacking the typical structure found in a regular football game, our simple game of catch quickly deteriorated into a game of Calvinball, in which new rules are made on the spot, sometimes without the benefit of the other player knowing. For instance, when Joe threw the ball way over my head, I yelled, "You have to sing the 'I'm Very Sorry Song!' "

"How does that go?" he said.

"I don't remember, but I get to sing part of it, too, and call you a scurvy scalawag. Oh, and you have to go get the ball."

Because the sun was blinding at particular angles, our positions were somewhat fluid. When one of us got tired of looking into the sun, that person simply rotated 90 degrees, and the other player adjusted his position to one ten feet away. Eventually we got back to where we started, which seemed like a good time to end the game.

Later, we reviewed our strategies and skills. Joe was genuinely impressed with my throwing ability, even at the short distances our laziness dictated, and said so.

"You thought I was going to be a weenie, didn't you," I said smugly.

He admitted that such a preconceived notion had existed. He also insisted that I must have had significant prior experience that I was not sharing with him, such as perhaps having played football with my brother when I was younger. Or having been a professional in a previous life.

"I don't remember any early football experiences," I said, "although I was drafted into carrying around the basketball for my brother and his friends when I was about three. Mostly I staggered around the driveway with it. I doubt I made too many baskets."

He did not see that this would have had much bearing on my football ability.

But overall we felt we had played a very satisfying, if nontraditional, game of football. We look forward to another game, when maybe we'll even do some running.