Punch Ball
I never realized how accurate the old Calvin & Hobbes cartoons were until recently. As a kid, my parents shared those cartoons with me and my brother, and they resonated with us as children. We all laughed at them and enjoyed them because Calvin reminded us of Jonathan. Now I have an all-new perspective on Calvin. Remember Calvin Ball?
There’s a new sport in town and it’s called Punch Ball. Lucas is the inventor and he and his imaginary friends (who are real friends not really present) play Punch Ball in my kitchen and living room. The rules of the game are extremely complex, and despite my careful observation I have not figured them out. I will try to convey what I know.
Punch Ball is played with an ordinary yellow koosh ball, recently given to Lucas by Aunt Kellie on her birthday. (Go figure.)
Punch Ball delicately skirts the borders of allowable indoors behavior. Generally speaking, ball play is forbidden in our house; it has been verboten ever since we realized that Lucas has a terrific throwing arm and a penchant for sports. A koosh ball is not really a ball, you see. It only sort of rolls and only sort of bounces.
Throwing toys is also forbidden indoors. In Punch Ball, the player holds the ball at arm’s reach out in front of his body, then he punches it with his other fist. Usually, it does not go very far. When it lands on the floor, the player can follow up a kick (complete with soccer-style dribbles and stops) or he can collapse to the floor to punch it again with his fist. Generally speaking, with experience and control, the player can keep the koosh ball in constant motion without literally breaking the house rules. Like I said, it doesn’t actually travel that far or gain great momentum.
The player frequently runs after the koosh ball, especially if it flies or rolls farther than usual as a result of the previous punch or kick. He also runs to a number of colorful bases, which are various flat puzzle pieces of shapes (hexagon, circle, square, rectangle, star, etc., also a present to Lucas from Aunt Kellie on her birthday). Anyway, sometimes the player pauses on a base for a while. Sometimes he just touches the bases, tells himself that he’s safe, and then goes to retrieve the koosh again. I’ve noticed the game is played more vertically (i.e., with more running and jumping) in bare feet, and more horizontally (i.e., with more collapsing, crawling, and rolling) in stocking feet. I guess the socks make it tougher to stay upright on the slippery, wooden Punch Ball court.
Several positions are played by the imaginary friends. For example, Xander plays “home runner.” Tasha plays “flag waver.” Teryn plays “base checker.”
I’m really fuzzy on this next part, but it seems when the points get up to 689, the whole tenor of the game changes in a fundamental way. Perhaps it works like overtime or sudden death, or something.
So far, I’ve only vaguely outlined the shape of this game. Here are some quotes from the rule master himself.
“If you make the weirdest punch, you get 11 points.”
“If you fall in Punch Ball, then you have to kick the ball and get on a base.”
“There’s no umpires in Punch Ball.”
“I won. I got 9 points.”
“This whole day, I’m gonna be in Kindergarten playing Punch Ball.”
“Oooh! There’s double sixes!”
“I won on 68!”
“You can do it, Sierra! Punch the ball!”
I wonder how the season’s going…
March 13, 2006 at 2:40 am
I had a game when I was little (and this is a fairly common one I’ve heard) where I could not touch the carpet. Convieniently, the home my family lived in at the time had red and orange shag carpeting, which of course was lava and would burn you if you stepped on it. I generally was not supposed to climb around on the furniture, which I did anyway, and I still remember pleading with my parents “but moooooom, the floor is lava! I have to walk across the couch so my feet don’t get burned!” My favorite conveyance was an office chair on wheels that I pushed with a broom. It was like a boat on the lava river! I could also put down the couch cushions as stepping stones across the lava. The tile and vinyl areas of the floor were safe, but dispite my parent’s repeatedly suggesting it, there were NOT any shoes, real or imaginary, that would protect my feet from lava. Duh mom and dad, the lava would just melt the rubber.
March 13, 2006 at 1:08 pm
I often played “floor’s on fire!” when I worked at a furniture store in Orangevale. The rules were easy, someone just had to shout “floors on fire!” and everyone would have to run across the tops of the furniture all the way back to the back counter. This could be really tricky over entertainment centers and armoires. It wasn’t a game to be played when the manager was around.
March 13, 2006 at 1:51 pm
I used to play that game too. Our carpet was splotchy–it had splotches of rust, brown, and white (maybe beige too, can’t remember exactly). Sometimes only one of those colors would be safe to step on.
We also used to make a boat out of our loveseat. We’d put a stick pony head-down into the cusions to create a mast, and then we’d drape sails over it. That was the best place in the world from which to watch early Saturday morning cartoons before mom and dad woke up.