What To Do When There's No Wireless

I don't think I'd ever played Red Rover in my life until yesterday.

We're wandering around Calvin College during conference free time. The campus is beautiful--almost wooded--with wandering paths and many grass fields and small patios for taking a break from walking. But there isn't a centrally located area where everyone can congregate, hang out, and look for people they know. So unless you have a plan already before free time begins, you're left wandering around with a couple people, wondering if you should swim, karaoke, or try to go off campus for a while.

So I'm wandering around campus with three youth, and we stumble upon a group of kids playing Red Rover. Nat is known by one of them, so we get invited to play. Needless to say, the game is very different when young adults are playing. Matthew, the smallest person playing, gets called over as soon as we join up, comes leaping into my arm and the guy's next to me, flips over our arms and lands on his head. "Is your back OK?" "My back's fine; it's my neck that hurts." I guess that's why we fill out the medical releases. ("Don't worry," Karin, he seems to be fine this morning. He can still move all his limbs.)

Over the next 30 minutes or so, young ladies are getting clotheslined, everyone's getting abrasions on their arms, and large young men are barreling others over. At one point the other team was down to five people, but we kept asking passersby to join us, so the teams just kept getting bigger and bigger. I think at is largest our team had about 50-60 people on it.

This reminds me of the other game I've been playing recently, "British Bulldog," a game I hadn't played since I was a boy. After church many Sundays we kids would gather on the open field and play: one kid in the middle, the others on one side of the field. After the guy in the middle yells "British Bulldog," the others run across the field, trying to reach the other side without being tackled by the one in the middle. When tackled, you join the "bulldog" in the middle, till there are none left.

I had not seen this game played nor heard of it since I was about 11, till just a couple weeks ago, when the kids at our church now are playing it. "British Bulldog!" I exclaim, immediately joining in. Thankfully, I'm bigger than everyone else, so I don't get hit too hard.