Freestyle Friday

High school Gym class would have been the bane of my existance if it weren't for my teacher, Mr. V. He was really cool.

Quite randomly last night, I was jolted with the image of a game we used to play in class. It was a version of tag, but you could only tag someone with a big red ball and if you had the ball, your feet couldn't move. I loved this game, I nearly always won whenever we played it in class, and usually ended up in the top few people when we played with all four classes at once.

Every time I won, Mr. V would look at me with an expression of wonder, trying to wrap his mind around how I could possibly win at this game when I couldn't run five laps.

It's possible he thought I was cheating, but I wasn't, I was being strategic. There's a difference.

When all four classes played together--that's well over a hundred people--all you had to do was stay alive for the first two minutes and then suddenly half the students playing, the ones that didn't want to play in the first place, would be tagged. And then they'd clump and gossip. And if someone had the ball near them, they would automatically ignore the entire clump because they'd assume that everyone in it or near it had been tagged.

So I just stood there and acted casual and never got tagged and would eventually face Mr. V's expression of wonder.

Sometimes though, a whistle would be blown and everyone who hadn't been tagged yet had to raise and wave their hand. Typically, there'd be one or two jocks left, a teacher, and me.

Everyone would look at the jocks, look at the teacher, and then stare at me.

Then I'd get tagged and that'd be the end of that.

But it's still nice to remember how being smart can trump being physical.

And the expression of wonder it can cause.