One of the games that we played a lot that would now be
very politically incorrect, but I can never remember anybody telling
us not to play or at least rename, was a tackling game that you
played with a football called 'Smear the Queer'. The game really had
nothing to do with sexual orientation, as far as I know, whoever had
the ball was ' the queer' so of course you were supposed to chase him
down and tackle him. Once whoever was it got tackled he could throw
the ball to someone else who had to pick it up if it touched them and
then they were 'queer'. Then it began again and 'the queer' tried to
run away as fast as they could before they got tackled, on infinitum.
There were a few complicating factors in this game first, no one
wanted to be 'the queer' as it was bad for your health; and secondly
you didn't want to make a popular kid the 'queer' because then they
would hate you. For these reasons and because calling me
'all-time-queer' had zero social ramifications for the other boys,
sometimes they would dispense with the ball and just chase me down
over and over. We would be heading out of class for recess and
someone would yell, 'Nate is all-time-queer' and then I would take
off, which was a mistake, I should have played it cool and ruined
their fun. I was a slow runner so it was just a matter of seconds
before I was caught and tackled. They would let me up and give me a
head start and then catch me again. It sucked.
