Depending upon how it’s played, Dodgeball can be an enjoyable, humiliating, demeaning, terrorizing, mortifying and/or incredibly painful game…
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When I recall playing Dodgeball, I am able to recapture two memories: The harmless version I played in elementary school and the body-punishing version (we called it Murder Ball) I played in Junior High School. In the former, we had to bounce the ball once before striking the opponent and in the latter we threw the ball as hard as we could at any (and I mean any) exposed body part.
The 2004 movie, “DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story” best captures the version I played at the H. Wilson Thorpe Junior High School in Hampton, Virginia (We were the Deacons and our colors were black and white). I can still recall being the last person standing out of sixty people. It was a wonderful if exceedingly fleeting moment of glory.
Dodgeball’s origins can be traced to 18th century Africa. It was played with rocks. Now, that is what I call Murder Ball.
Depending upon how it’s played, Dodgeball can be an enjoyable, humiliating, demeaning, terrorizing, mortifying and/or incredibly painful game that can be played in teams or individually. Do you have a Dodgeball memory? If so, let us know.
