It’s finally come, friends—my Thanksgiving break! By far the best part about being a teacher is getting all these vacation days, and I am thoroughly planning on living it up by catching up on all my unread magazines, going running in the mornings (finally!), finding some time during the day to actually see the sunlight, and prepping my stomach for all the food it’s about to take in.
You want to know how my school kicks off the kids for Thanksgiving break?
Today, in the last hour and a half (90 MINUTES, people!), we had a gigantic dodgeball tournament in which each class plays other classes for 2 minutes a game. Because I was in heels (conveniently), I opted to not play, but don’t you worry—I was still getting hit about every two minutes by some “stray” ball. It seemed that literally every time I let my guard down for more than three seconds to yell at a kid or something, I got whacked somewhere.
The worst was at the end—I had just turned my head down to see who was next up to play, and BAM! A dodgeball smacked the side of my face like a rubbery hand, and I was left with a pink mark on my face for the remainder of the school day.
While I was watching the students line up (most of them timidly) against opposite walls and start pelting each other as hard as they could across the room, I wondered to myself:
“What kind of sick sadist planned a game where you just try to whack the tar out of each other with large rubber balls? What normal kid actually LIKES this game growing up?”
It’s sick, I tell you. (Of course, I always hated dodgeball as a kid—I wasn’t bad at it, but that was mostly because I learned the strategy of hiding not too close to people who get too into the game nor too close to people who are easy targets.)
My husband, of course, loves dodgeball. In fact, it’s one of the forms of exercise he currently is okay with the idea of (unlike running, doing Billy Blanks videos with me, or dancing).
Did you like dodgeball growing up?