Take cover!

Last night, my church decided to have a dodgeball tournament. Yes, a dodgeball tournament. It was open to all ages and offered as a fellowship/recreation/outreach opportunity. And the pastor kept talking it up from the pulpit, so I knew that I was going to go, if just to watch.

Let me say this now: I do not have the years of elementary dodgeball experience everyone else in the U.S. has. When I was in elementary P.E., our teacher either made the girls play volleyball and the guys play basketball or we ran. Once in awhile we’d play softball. Or run the mile. And once a year, take the Presidential Physical Fitness test. That pretty much sums up my experience. I do remember some BSU activities in college, though, in which we played dodgeball, and I HATED it. HATED IT! Mostly because the guys took the opportunity to wallop the girls, but, oh well, it’s in the past. 🙂

So back to last night. Mindy and I walked into the crowded gym and started looking for the people from our class who were playing. They were wearing tube socks and headbands, so immediately I was laughing. Not at them, per se. OK, at them. There were chairs around the perimeter for people to sit and watch the competition, and Mindy and I staked out a couple before everything got started. Then, they lined 4 teams up (half court games, two happening at once) and play began.

OK, let me describe this to you. Two teams are facing off on each court. There isn’t a huge sideline in the Judson gym and the walls are cinderblock. On one side of the gym, in the spectator section, there are bleachers, but they weren’t pulled out. Chairs were placed there, in front of the cinderblock wall. Understand that the teams are lined up in front of us and this is when the spectators realize that, yes, we are sort of in the firing line. But this is church dodgeball, we all think. They won’t get crazy.

We thought wrong. This team of high school guys with bad attitudes were facing the spectators and were dead-set on annihilating their competition. Or the spectators. It really didn’t seem to matter. Orange balls were flying everywhere, smacking the cinderblock wall and hitting people on ricochet. It was pandemonium. The team of guys kept flinging balls full force, smacking mothers, fans, and a few members of the other teams. Spectators were clearing out and actually taking cover behind a fence of basketball goals in the corner. There were shouts of “Take cover!” and “Save yourself!” (OK, there weren’t shouts of that last one, but it improves the story. And it doesn’t matter that I was the person shouting for people to take cover.) Before Mindy and I could get out of the way of the firing squad, I’d been hit upside the head (in the eye) and the pastor’s wife had run as fast as I’ve ever seen anyone run to get away. And she’s not really the running kind of lady.

When the chaos was over and the barrage of orange nerf ball artillery had finally stopped, everyone seemed to be alive and counted for. And some intelligent soul made the decision to move the spectators to the ends of the court where people weren’t throwing things at them.

That, my friends, is pretty much my life. 🙂