My Lil' Nemesis

I joined a Dodgeball team. I was pretty doubtful about it at first. Like many people, my memories of Dodgeball from elementary school are universally unpleasant. What is it that is supposed to be fun about getting drilled by a ball?? However, in the spirit of my New Year’s resolution, when I was invited to play, I accepted. Hearing that the balls are small, softer than a Nerf ball and that it is quite a challenge to inflict pain with them helped make it a bit more appealing.

Turns out that Dodgeball is way fun. Our team, Catfish Mud, is thoroughly awful, but the team is full of nice, amusing, silly people and I laugh a ton. We have yet to win a single match-up, but I feel confident that we are improving and will triumph eventually. We are slowly grasping the whole strategy thing, which helps. One of the nicest things about the whole scene is that there are all sorts of ages there. The littlest Dodgeballers are about 7 (they only count as half a player for the team and you have to hit them twice for them to be out) and just about every age from 7 up to 40 is there.

The little ones are the most entertaining. They take it quite seriously and get very ferocious. Several of them are also wicked good. They also make great target practice and are easy to steal the balls from during warm-up. Tonight we were in constant battle during the warm-up with one in particular and found ourselves matched up against his team for our opening game. Unfortunately for us it was one of our worst losses yet. We had been doing so well beforehand, throwing the ball a little harder, catching balls thrown at us, hitting people on occasion, but when it came to game time we choked. Our little nemesis was quite pleased about it and was even talking smack. But it was in a friendly teasing way. After our second game he asked us, “Hey girls, did you win?” When we said, “no” he gave a full body sort of “shucks” motion that seemed to convey genuine disappointment and then was cheering for us as during our last game.

There is talk of practice sessions so that our team can be a little less pathetic but it seems a tad bit crazy to be having Dodgeball practice. Then again…