Dodgeball Psychology
If you end up last standing in a game of dodgeball it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re the best player (though I watched a couple of students attempt to pull this off), but that you hugged the back wall while others courageously fought at the mid-gym, red line—went to battle or were zapped right off. Perhaps, without thought or a drive at victory, sometimes the game is just play, that is for some, some of the time.
I watch two back-wall girls. One who wears fur boots with her shorts picks up the ball if it comes within an inch and quickly tosses it away like a ticking time bomb, not at any target, just to be out of the vicinity of blown up.
The other girl does make herself a target, purple on starched white, newer moves, she’s told me her family is coast guard, her Dad’s been at post less than a month. Her strut and thick, gold-chained bracelet seem very mannish, the way she cuts her hair, earlier helped instruct the skinny, made-up girls in too tight gym clothes how to dead lift, a lesbian with a soft coat of arms, she NEEDS the others to accept her as tough.
She’s now saving herself for the last battled throw, after her crouch out at the wall, she waits until all the others are gone, then runs hero to the line with that last red ball to hurl with all her might at the two sets of pale legs on the other side, make a win for herself to be part of the team. The others are not concerned with watching her and so all they see is that she winds up last one standing game after game after game leaving them with the impression that she must be a winner as she ends up on top (last) and that even with their greatest effort they wind up waiting in line for a kill that brings them back in, not the last one, Braveheart on the battlefield.
The gym teacher sees me watching, let’s me know that fur-boots is special ed. and the one with long Nike shorts and perfectly white sneakers has to be watched because she likes to make a game of bouncing caustic remarks off the boys.
Photo Credit: Creative Commons/Google