Saamba

i will be the first to admit, i am not a fan of organized group activities. i would much prefer letting everyone do their own thing, and if some of those people just happen to like doing the same thing then godspeed they can do their thing together. if you force an activity on a group as a whole, you are bound to find that there are people that are naturally predisposed to not having fun. i am one such person.

even when i was younger, i never found the draw of duck duck goose or scavenger hunts. i was slow, dreadfully clumsy (still am) and asthmatic, such "games" are not fun under those terms.

pin the tail on the donkey traumatized me when i was 7.

as the elementary school years went by, the reindeer games slowly morphed into something more cruel and sadistic, dodge ball. again, i was not a happy camper and pulled the asthma card every chance i got. a curse, but such a blessing when it came to phys ed class.

i thought surely in the steps between elementary school and junior high, such pastimes would have gone by the wayside. and while they were not so blatant, i found the dreaded junior high dances were pretty much along the same vein. after all, you had to go�

(while they were not school-imposed mandatory, they were self-imposed mandatory. you certainly did not want to hear on monday morning how your crush had been holding hands with the annoying popular token cute chick (my school was made up of 98 percent of them) the entire night and how they kissed during the last dance. at least if you were there you could do something about it, like accidentally run into her, or trip her so she sprained an ankle and had to leave early, leaving your crush consoling you as you cry and feign your agony and sorrow over ruining his night...)

where was i? oh, yeah, how junior high dances are like reindeer games - the same cool kids that got picked first for dodge ball were now being picked first to dance (as they were good at it, unlike you, whose dance moves consisted solely of shuffling your feet and trying not to lose balance), while you were left to work the �critter club� food and drinks booth (yes, i was a member of the critter club-we helped raise money to help animal shelters and get strays adopted, and i�m proud of it!).

but alas, the reindeer game mentality continued.

my high school freshman summer break, i became a day camp counselor. there were reindeer games a-plenty, only this time, i was in charge - which i hated even more than playing, as i had to be the bad guy. i could see the trauma being written across the faces of some of my favorite campers (the ones who reminded me of myself at their ages). i did this for six years: simon says, red rover, duck duck goose, capture the flag� every reindeer game in the book, i made these poor children play. i hate myself for it.

after my final year as a counselor, i thought i was free of all reindeer games. i continued on throughout college, filling my summer breaks with stints at the local record store and as a ticket taker at the local performing arts center. life was good, i was overcoming the trauma that was my gripping fear of being the last chosen for a tv tag team. i graduated and joined the �real world,� working at a bank for a while, and in time writing about carpet cleaning (a real job, i swear, someone has to do it!). no reindeer games to be found. i finally felt adult. and then i switched jobs.

i write about a slightly more interesting subject than carpet cleaning, but with this step up in the world, i have also taken a step back. the company loves reindeer games. and they use any chance they can to force them on their employees. last Christmas, it was guess the reindeer poop (i shit you not - they had things like chocolate covered raisins, malted milk balls and crushed up mushy oatmeal cookies in different cups. it was wrong on so many levels). this year, our "survivor"-themed company picnic saw us running around trying to fill a pitcher with water, using a cup with a hole on the bottom, from two basins (two basins, 6 teams - there were concussions, people) and �fishing� blindfolded for yellow and green rubber fish. i don�t know what was more traumatic, being expected to take part at age 27, or knowing there were people there twice my age that were actually enjoying this.

maybe I�m strange, but i thought for one�s own sense of self-respect, the reindeer games were supposed to end with puberty.

ps - i never did get anywhere with my junior high crush� he never forgave me for breaking his crush�s ankle�

0 wrote to say im an idiot.