In
a sport already so rife with homoerotic overtones one would think
there would be an effort to keep any games which involved whacking
shirtless boys with a 'pink weenie' out of the curriculum. One would
be mistaken. If practice ad gone well some days the coaches would
have us play games to finish off our time. The games were always
violent and borderline abusive. One was called 'Slap Back' which if
I am remembering right is exactly like 'Duck-Duck-Goose' except
instead of tapping heads you slap down hard on someones back to let
them know that they are 'it'. It was just some regular slapping and
running until one of the huge kids, the one that kicked me
incidentally, wound up into a jumping slap and smashed one of the
more mellow conscripts and bruised his back in the shape of a hand.
The poor dude didn't even jump up to give chase he just screamed and
writhed on the floor and started to cry. Good, clean, fun. The hit
had been so vicious that no one to my knowledge even teased the kid
about crying we all just felt bad and were glad it was not us. It may
come as a surprise to people who have never been in combat sports of
any type how often tears, if not full blown crying, is involved. This
holds true all the way to the ranks of professional martial artists
and Olympic wrestlers. The game I teased at the first of this story
was a modified game of tag where the person that was it had a towel
that was rolled tight and and wrapped in pink duct tape. Once again
the game was played shirtless and the weenie man would start in the
middle of a marked of circle and when a signal was given everyone
else tried to get away before he could get his big pink ersatz weenie
on their naked bodies. Not unlike a long navel voyage or a stay in
prison the winner of this game was the last one untouched by the guy
with the mandate to touch one and all with his weenie. Nothing
untoward here, just boys learning to be men - real manly men.
