http://www.cad-forums.com/showthread.php?t=78229

Interesting thread from our friends over in CtrlAltDel forums.

Apparently, a school has actually banned... tag. And all other "contact" sports.

Yay, give kids one more reason not to spend recess running.

schools are doing it. Its stupid. If a kid falls down and scrapes his knee, take him to the nurses office and give him a band-aid. If the parent gets pissy about this, they're a moron who shouldn't. Falling and getting scraped is part of growing up, and if your kid doesnt do it at all, they will stay 10 years old and you'll have to support them. Besides, if the parent just takes the kid out, so what? The schools money comes from the government, not from people who go there.

Spyder- I'd certainly agree to punishing malicious behaviour in sports, but to ban them altogether? What can they be thinking? Physical activity is very important to health, even mental health.

Does that mean I am socially inept because I wasn't punched in the face enough as a child?

Oh whats that *views the American Education System digging its own grave* Can we borrow that when you are done?

Its the soccer moms of the world. They either have too much to do that they don't pay attention to what their kids are doing so they assume that banning anything remotely competitive will reduce their need to be actual parents OR they are so bored with their own lives that they have nothing better to do than enact marshall law on the playground. For the former, its a little ironic that heavily business-minded, work-aholic parents who strive to be competitive in their workplace don't always condone competitive behavior in their children. I've seen it time and time again that parents of this nature tend to dope their kids up with Ritalin when, in reality, they should be taking AWAY the sugar or learn to be more patient parents. Children who sould be enjoying a little game of tag are usually too stoned out of their tiny gourds to even recall what running around was like.

For the latter group of parents, they are usualy the stay-at-home kind of parents who do little creative things from the home to keep occupied until little Johnny and little Suzie come home. These are also the same parents who attempt to instill pacifism in their children which keeps them from being anything but a whiner. We all know what happened to the whiner in class. These parents are so busy BEING parents that they leave no room for their child to develop social communications with their peers. There was once a time when a child came home with a black eye that the parents glared at said child and made the inquiry: "What the Hell did you do?!" Even if the fault belonged squarely on the other child. From this, we learned certain social barriers - like not to piss off the unusually large fifth grader.

Tag is more than just a silly game, its our way of focusing raw, unbridled energy into a semi-innocent contact sport. Children aren't born with a sense of hate, it comes with time and learning it from outside sources. Parents who believe otherwise should consider having their heads examined. Tag is a way for our children to express the need to touch one another (and anyone who has toddlers knows how affectionate they can be at inappropriate times) without telling them its okay to hug everyone within a fourteen inch radius.

We might as well do away with natural human instinct to be competitive, the teaching of how to dodge (much like our neanderthal ancestors), and among other things to do away with:
Dodgeball
Hide 'n' Seek
Duck, Duck, Goose

...
Its pointless.

Well I was raised in the bush as I believe all people should be. I knew from an early age if I couldn't take the kid I wasn't about to pick a fight, if a guy got to rough on the play ground you *tell* him to settle down or he can't play any more, and most of all when you play war with big sticks and rock filled pinecones: a shove doesn't mean beans.

just like my health teacher said= your social health dies, same too the mental and physical. etc.

I play war with big sticks. Since we're not actually trying to hurt each other, we pass on the pinecones. it is extremely fun, but it's like tai-kwon-do. It won't do us any good in the real life, because since we're pretending the sticks are actual swords, no one grabs the sword, and we don't hit hands or wrists (purposefully)

Actually Martial Arts are a good way of calming yourself, I have a friend who is a right ass and has no self control except when doing his Kata or what ever it is called.

*sigh* My elementary school days probably are actually the last of the tough kinds. I remembered when we played dodgeball, and the ball hits a girl's face and gives her nosebleed. But, she didn't cry or anything. She just walks to the nurse's office and still comes to school as usual.

Banning tags... I wonder if this is the reason why I felt that incoming freshmen seem to be shorter and shorter every year

I was a small chubby kid who got picked last for whatever the game was in the playground that day, so i've repressed any memories of my childhood and any form of tag.

Lol I'm not short or chubby, But I always get picked last cause I suck at anything involving a team. Every man for himself games are loads more fun. Raqutetball is the only sport I'm actually halfway decent at... and football is only fun when you get tackled. Otherwise it sucks.

My school wasnt doing that until I was in fifth grade. But at least they wisened up to something and started teaching language in fourth grade.

also, I have never gotten a nosebleed. weird, huh?

>.<

too angry to reply coherently

Nosebleeds were a (almost)daily occurance back in the elementary school days.
Today they have become slightly more civilised here, but injuries like bruised knees where the blood is flowing and such are far from uncomon yet, and the response from the teachers and most parents to such injuries are mostly "Tough luck there, learn to live with it." Though there are lots of overprotective folks as well here.

Raise your kids as vikings/bushmen/somethingferal, and they should be able to survive their 20 year old birthday

Banning tag haha could only happen in the states
If that was just suggested here, whoever who brought it forth would get booed out, or laughed out.

Some years ago, one of the neighbours here (an old man) saw two of his grandsons having a fight, and he said.
*sigh* "Here I have made them knifes, and then they use their fists" *sigh* "The youth today"

I don't play tag.

Does that mean I'm fucked now that I've seen 20?

geez, that must suck to those kids. poor kids. Tag is a classic game. it shouldn't be banned.

Bwuh? Banning an innocent contact game? Unless the kids are hemophiliacs, a little bit of tag is no big problem. Kids don't really comprehend most complex emotions, they don't really know spite or cruelty unless they got some wierd mental problem. When I was in elementary, if you didn't want to play tag and someone wouldn't leave you alone, you *tell* on them and they'd get a talk from some teacher, really, it's just lazyness on the teacher's part. They don't wanna have to bother with letting the little tykes getting into squabbles and having to sort it out. Come on, settling a "He knocked over my sand-castle" type dispute isnt that hard.

Yep

Oh, man, I loved those kids so much. Their parents told them that if they ignored me I'd go away and they believed it! Hours of fun throwing things, hurling abuse and the occasional compass-point in the spine and they tried to pretend it didn't bother them.

Ah, good times.


Yeah, but the hard part was aiming well enough to hit them in the face with the medicine ball.


Hear ye, hear ye: grym admits to enjoying man-tackles!


I try, but horned helmets are so expensive these days. Never mind what a decent longship will set you back.

Hm... I don't think it's expensive to get horned helmets. Steal a cow and slaughter it, get its horns and the get some random metal helmet, even the motorcycle ones, and cover it with tar and random animal fur, in this case, get it from the dead cow, and the stick the horns on.

Also, I like-a tackle in football, too

I prefer doing the tackling myself rather than being tackled, but to each his own.

yeah but for all of half a second it feels like you're flying. Then you hit the ground. I got tackled twice the first day at camp. we were playing football as our bunk activity, tackle football.

Farmers shoot people in my country. They make me wary, with their slow talking and supposed "animals".


Hey, a dom. I wouldn't have pegged it.


And that was before they left the bedroom!

Oh Verby is full of Zingers today.

I hope you don't mean the KFC chicken because that would raise all kinds of questions about where I'm putting them since I'm on a not-eating break.

And what do you mean, "today"?

He meant you were like pooh-bear. 'Cept instead of cotton stuffing, you've got colonel sanders.

I don't know if I like that. Pooh tends to be on the receiving end of any slash relationship. Always getting stuck in a mysteriously "presenting" fashion does not bode well in a world populated by people who enjoy some of the products of my mind.

That has to be the shortest post I've seen yet, Verbose.

He chose verbose as his name for a reason.

Gotta stay in character!

On-topic, banning tag isn't anything new, really. They banned tag and dodgeball at the elementary school I went to when I was in the third grade, and luckily for them we were fairly nice tykes.
"You can't play tag anymore."
"Aw, now what do we do?"
"Let's kick balls at each other!"
"YAY!"
Kids are good at making up games, taking away tag only brings about a new one. Bad tactics by the teachers though, who knows what kids nowadays will come up with?

well, I've invented a game which combines hide and seek, tag, capture the flag, and basketball. It's extremely fun. I call it jimba choomba. dont ask why.

I invented a game that combines laser tag, go karting and tennis, do I get points for that?

how do you play? and yes, you get +1 on your post count for that.

Sweet, so to play the game you strap a couple laser tag vests to your go kart, then you drive around the track while whacking the ball back and forth with your racket, hitting your opponents target earns you a point, landing the ball in your opponents seat earns you ten, first to 21 wins.

Why 21? And you earn no points if you simply hit the opponent instead of the target?

I really wanted to play blackjack when I was thinking up the game.

wait, hitting the laser tag vests with the ball gets you a point? Why not just have it hitting the bumper car gets you a point?

Because there's more surface area to the go kart than there would be to the vest's target. This makes it more difficult.

Hitting the target with the laser gun gets you a point, you have the racket and the gun, choosinge which you need to use when the opportunity presents itself.

oooooh. yeah that makes more sense.

but jimba choomba seems a little more convenient.

Yeah well, there is less chance of hitting something while steering a go-kart with you knees.

Maybe you need an escort of some sort to push the cart for you.

I meant convenient as in easy to set up and you dont need a lot of stuff. All you need is a basketball and a designated object.

All of the games I invented involved variations on Brandy - a game where you hurl a tennis ball at others as hard as you can.

that sounds... painful.

Pain makes you tougher

It's funny until you play in a small room with a three kilo medicine ball.

It's heavy enough to hurt but not too heavy to pelt it at good speed. Truly, I think I saw more than one near-rupturing of a testicle that day.

Tennisballs and testicle rupturing... brings back memories.. kinda strange ones to be honest.