I happened to walk by the Intramural Athletic field today, didn't mean to but I happened to end up there. I wasn't really paying any attention to where I was heading, I was pretty distracted. The day had started off pretty rocky; I had just sprinted onto campus to turn in my first big paper 45 minutes late, I had slept maybe 5 hours in the last two days and the congestion in my chest felt like grade A log cabin syrup. I could feel the makings of a pounding headache rolling around my head. Generally, things had fallen a couple pegs.
I happened to glance over at the IM field. It must have been Junior Athletics day because the place was crawling with kids in the low teens. They were playing a hodge-podge of soccer, football and lacrosse without any apparent confusion: all the kids whipped into a frenzy wearing a sorry looking collection of helmets and shin guards. Just beyond them, the two supervisors were flirting with each other, the kids left to their run-of-the-mill hooliganism- except, it seemed, for two girls and a boy.
The boy lay on the ground, fists pumping over the face guard of his helmet, rocking onto either shoulder blade. The girls stood above and whacked him with lacrosse sticks.
From my description it might sound like something violent was occurring. I wasn't sure myself at the time but, looking closer, I realized that violence wasn't a very big-part of it at all. Their whacks were so methodical, alternating girl-to-girl and concentrating mostly on the helmet. Every so often they'd pat him a couple times on the gut, but it looked more like a signal for him to turn over because he would then slowly flip on his belly and let his assailants work the other side over. They took particular care to work out the back of the helmet and the shoulders, like the doughiest part of a ball of yeast. He didn't seem all that surprised, he didn't really seem to struggle, he lay there with a sense of acceptance.
Today, I could have been that kid, ritualistically being owned by two helmeted pre-pubescent girls wielding second-hand, non-regulation sized lacrosse sticks. Life is actually pretty sweet.