Sometimes, I just don't understand people. I really don't. Every so often, some people take up a cause so stupid, so inane, that I am tempted to denounce my humanity and convert to another animalhood. Therefore, if one day you see me wandering around loudly proclaiming that I am a yak, please understand how it came to that.
I had one of these moments recently after watching an episode of "Real Sports" on HBO. If you have never seen this show, I encourage you to check it out. It doesn't matter whether you're a sports fan; this takes everyday sports issues and presents stories in a newsmagazine format so interesting and well-done that it legitimizes the amount of cash I fork out every month for HBO. This show is the one thing that's kept me from writing off Bryant Gumbel (who is the host) as a total dweeb.
Anyway, a topic on the most recent show was a movement to ban dodge ball from our nation's school physical education programs. Seriously. And the movement's gaining in momentum across the nation, as more and more teachers, school administrators and school boards take up the issue.
One of the leading proponents of this anti-dodge ball movement is Neil Williams, the chairman of the health and physical education department at Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, Conn. He was interviewed for the "Real Sports" piece, as well as an article in the Feb. 21, 2001 issue of Education Week. (The article may be viewed at www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=23dodge.h20.)
"Dodge ball is one of those games that encourages aggression and the strong picking on the weak," Williams told Education Week.
OK, I'll admit that there's something aggressive about a game in which someone takes a ball and fires it at people in an effort to knock them out of the game. That's true.
But -- and don't miss my point here -- so freaking what? There's something aggressive about nature, in which bigger animals have a tendency to eat smaller animals. There's something aggressive about a capitalist society that rewards people willing to do anything to get ahead, even if it means stepping on others. Heck, there's something aggressive about life, in which a disease or freak accident can wipe out the best person before his or her logical time to go.
This is DODGE BALL. This is a GAME. Just like every other sport in the world, it rewards the aggressive and the skilled at the expense of the meek and the less-skilled.
And this is coming from a person who, in terms of dodge ball skills, was equivalent to a sagebrush. First of all, I have never been the most athletic guy. While I have outgrown it, I had a muscular developmental problem that meant I didn't walk right for the first eight years or so of my life. I am highly uncoordinated (try to ask my former softball teammates how well I field grounders without them rolling their eyes), and I have the hand-eye coordination of a blind amputee. In other words, I was creamed, and creamed badly as a child in dodge ball.
Fortunately, I creamed most of the dodge ball studs and studettes in the classroom. It all evened out.
Therefore, I have no idea what Williams is talking about. Is it that he himself was poor at dodge ball and is holding some sick sort of grudge? In his words, from Education Week: "I have to say I enjoyed it. I was a skinny little runt of a guy, but I was incredibly sneaky and nasty in the game."
So that's not it. Maybe he's just nuts. Or maybe it's a function of living in a town called "Willimantic." Who knows.
All I know is this: There are a lot of problems in schools these days, and not a single one of them can be traced to dodge ball.
In Williams' own words, it's a game about aggression against the weak. That sounds like a simple lesson about life to me. That doesn't mean kids have to like the lesson. But anyone who thinks that's not an appropriate lesson for today's world needs to open their eyes -- and be ready to dodge.
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan who thinks the month "March" has an overly aggressive sound to it. Jimmy's column appears here Tuesdays, and a column archive may be viewed at jimmyboegle.com.