By Any Other Name

During the period of growing up, it seems, every culture has a variation on a game. When I was introduced to it, we called it, Smear the Queer. Whoever got the ball would be piled upon and ripped and torn at until they would forfeit the ball. Sometimes, people primed and ready to pounce would circle near the "pill of death", but ultimately, someone thinking they were fast enough and agile enough, or strong enough to fend off the initial attack, to grab it and run off , would swoop in. Occasionally the weaker among us would be goaded into grabbing it and both my wife and I had the wind knocked out of us playing this game. On her side of town, they called it, Kill the Bum.

By the time I heard of the game, I knew what queer was, so the name seemed relatively inappropriate, but I knew bums as well and neither name would have seemed acceptable to me, back then or now-a-days.

Interestingly enough, the brutality and vengeance that some players brought to the game made it distasteful at best for me and luckily, I only had to engage in the mayhem a few times. I remember some neighborhood kids lobbied the bullies who then changed the game to Kick the Can, which seemed to be a little safer, just to include me. It was, looking back on it true democracy ion action and it exhibited a culture of compassion that I did not understand until many years later. The fact that those young men stood up for my right to participate was appreciated, even though it took years to get the right words to say about it.