#41 Was Pin Elimination
Like most suburban kids, we created several original neighborhood outdoor games growing up. Andrew and I made a checklist of about 50 games that we taped to the wall inside our garage, so sometimes we would just pick a random number and play that game. Trio and Goonies were slight variations of the same game - one person hid three "golden" frisbees outside while everyone else locked themselves inside someone's garage until he was finished. Because the street was lava (obviously), you had to find ways to get across from yard to yard - wagons and skateboards did the trick, as did plastic baseball bases that you could throw out as stepping stones. After hiding the treasures, the solo person occasionally became a monster that you fought with nerf balls and plastic baseball bats. The game ended when all three frisbees were discovered and returned safely to the garage.
Straying from David and Andrew's awesome game checklist was a bad idea, as our younger neighbor so eloquently proved. In the challenging Oktorokto Dodo, the first person to say "Oktorokto Dodo" won. In the short-lived Candy Bar, you yelled out a brand of candy, and our neighbor would yell out how many points you got based on if he liked it or not (hint: Rollo was worth a million).
But no game came close to Tron. The premise was simple: you ran around trying to throw frisbees at your opponents' legs. Getting hit meant you were out, where you sat on the sidelines until someone won by eliminating the remaining players. The winner began the next game by standing in the center of everyone else and saying "Tron up", to which everyone raised their frisbees in the air before the action started up again with a "Tron Down, Tron On". Deflecting, curving, and leaping over frisbees led to some fast-paced melees. Once you threw your frisbee, there was great strategy in trying to retrieve it. It was the most physically demanding of our games, so hypochondriac cries of headaches and cramps were commonplace. But several years of cul de sac championships and word of the game spreading to other local neighborhoods made Tron the most famous game of Schoolhouse Woods Court.
Flips on the trampoline, great food, a 56k internet connection, catching up on sleep, video games and Full House reruns - it's good to be home. Sarah beat Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on the Gamecube tonight, and Andrew and I tried out all of the new characters and battle modes in Bomberman Jetters. Puss In Boots steals the show in Shrek 2, which has some creative twists that keep the story fresh and hilarious. X2 and The Hulk are both above-average comic book movie adaptations. The special features on both DVDs are worth watching - the level of detail Hollywood gives to creating a soundstage set or special effect is insane. Don came over on Sunday and played Concrete World 2 for about an hour and a half. Try staying on the map screen for 30 seconds...
Monday, June 21 at 9:38 PM
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