Frizbee!

Never leave home without it!

Jim and I decided the other night to go outside and throw a frizbee in the street.  At first, the 15 people who were all hanging out outside watched, laughing and clapping whenever we completed a tricky looking catch or throw (I guess they haven’t seen much frizbee?).  During the first few minutes of throwing I noticed about 7 boys all who looked like they were just dying to give it a try.  Truthfully, this was my goal from the beginning, so we invited them out.  I’ve never in all my frizbee throwing days seen a group of kids more instantly proficient at tossing disc.  There were a few bad throws at first, as expected, but within 5 minutes they were all throwing straight, with no wobbles, and with a surprising amount of power.  One of the smallest, I believe his name is Elias, watched me throw a forehand, picked up the disc, and without any hesitation threw a perfect forehand with power, directly to my hands!  American kids must be delaying the development of their motor skills through videogames and laziness and stuff, because these kids were amazing. (Jim also asked them if they had ever seen a frizbee before, and they said no)  Another interesting point is that without being prompted, they instantly established a fair system of sharing the frizbee.  They made sure that everyone got a turn, in order, and that no one was left out.  If one of them would catch the frizbee, and it wasn’t their turn to throw it back, they would hand it to the boy whose turn it was.  No one had to tell them to share, and the one time that one of the more boisterous boys, Dennis, tried to get more than his fair share of turns, he was instantly verbally berated, kicked a few times, and shunned by the others.  He walked off and sulked for a minute or two, but then returned, apologized, and was instantly accepted back into the order.  If we continue to play frizbee every once in a while, which I hope that we will, I’ll try to teach them Ultimate, and then Jim and I both brought extra frizbees, which we can leave with them.  After a little frizbee, they wanted to play football (soccer), so we did that for about a half hour.  They then wanted to play a different game, which ended up being a strange mix of dodgeball and pickle.  Jim and I stood on opposite ends of a partition of the street, and were given a ball.  The kids grouped up in front of me, and then took off running toward Jim, I was instructed to try to peg them with the ball, and that they each had three lives before they were out of the round.  They contintued to run back and forth between us, while we did our best to knock them out.  There didn't seem to be any "bases" or safe zones for them to reach, only to see who lasted the longest running back and forth.  I want to try and explain the game "Pickle" to them, but I'm going to have to look up a few words first.  Hopefully this will give me enough of a game-oriented vocabulary to explain Ultimate.  If so, it will be my greatest accomplishment.

the disc unites