Linden & Van Siclen 001: Protect The Pole.

Today Charles Jones hit his head against the school's flagpole.

We've been playing Protect The Pole for about a month now and no matter how many times we get in trouble for it, nothing has been able to stop us. It started with about 6 of us but the game grew pretty quickly and today we had a good 20+ players. With that many players we can't be too surprised that someone finally got hurt.

Protect The Pole is a really simple game, all you need is two teams and a pole. One team protects the pole, the other team tries to touch the pole. I guess the game is like a mix of football and the charge on some medieval battle field ... minus the spears, swords, and sky full of arrows, but apparently not without the blood.

And believe me, there was a lot of blood. I didn't actually see when Charles hit, but I heard it. There was a loud bell sounding gong followed by a chorus of kids yelling "OOOOOOH!" and when I turned to look I saw was Charles, lying on the floor, folded into himself, holding his head ... blood dripping down his face. During math, Clarence told me that Charles tried to tackle him, missed and went right into the pole. "His head bounced off the pole like a basketball," Clarence said. That shit must have really hurt.

I'm still a bit weirded out at how quickly the mood changed after the accident. It's funny what it takes to get some kids attention. We've been getting to school about 30 minutes early just to play but now we're starting to rethink the whole thing. Maybe we should just start playing something safer, like basketball or some two hand touch, but that just doesn't seem to calm me down as much as Protect The Pole. We're gonna have to figure something out though cause I'm not trying to get suspended over this shit.

-filthygomez, early 90s.