The number one movie in the box office this week is called, "Dodge Ball: A True Underdog Story." I don't plan to see it because it stars Ben Stiller. Not only is he unfunny but he's a bit of a douche bag. His movie does accomplish one thing. It reminds me how much I hate douchebags. Besides Ben Stiller, the movie reminds me that Neil F. Williams is a douchebag, too. You probably have no idea who that is. He's the panty-waste Physical Education instructor who wrote about the evils of dodge ball back in 1992. Thanks in part to his naysaying, dodge ball has been relegated the way of the air raid drill.
Air raid drills were stupid and should have been eliminated. If the Russians -- whom we used to call Soviets -- dropped a nuclear bomb on us, then our desks really weren't going to help much. Crawling under a piece of furniture did make it easier to kiss your own ass good-bye. But if that was the purpose, then it should have been an ass-kissing drill. You couldn't call it an ass-kissing drill, because that's what geeks do. Besides serving as easy dodge ball fodder, they kiss a lot of ass.
Neil F. Williams thinks you shouldn't smack a geeky kid with a ball. In fact, he doesn't believe in games of elimination. He's against musical chairs, Simon Says and duck-duck-goose. You can't have kids competing for fewer resources than children. According to Williams, "elimination games like Tag or Simon Says are essentially self-defeating, because the students who are least skilled and fit are usually the first to be caught." Welcome to life, douchebag. Can you imagine how interesting musical chairs would be with eight kids and ten chairs? Some geek will still figure out a way to hurt himself or get eliminated. Normal kids understand there is a certain element of chance associated with elimination. Trust me, they won't be scarred for life.
Williams would have probably been ignored--who listens to douchebags?--but chance intervened. In 1999 Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold built an arsenal of weapons that was not detected by their guardians. Neither the school district nor the police department ever noticed it. Kids today, let me tell ya. Harris and Klebold used their weapons to wipe out their classmates. As a result, a school district in Austin, Texas banned dodge ball because it was too violent. After all, Harris and Klebold played dodge ball. Other schools followed suit. They eliminated dodgeball in order to prevent gun violence in their schools.
In 1999, there were about 15,000 school districts in the United States but only a fraction had gun-assisted murders. It just doesn't make sense that most kids should be denied an opportunity to smack a geek in the face because of a few bad apples. You think al-qaeda is banning dodge ball because it's too rough? Of course not. They're banning it because they can't afford a dodge ball. If they had the money to buy a ball, then you can bet their kids would be playing elimination games.
Wake up, America. The country is at war. Once George W. Bush wins re-election, we're going have a draft. Once your kid becomes an expendable cog in the war machine, you're going to wish he participated in something a bit tougher than "Everybody Gets A Trophy Day." Okay, okay, here's the deal: kids should play dodge ball because it's fun. Occasionally it rains during PhysEd class and you have to go inside. What are you going to do, give each student a "Way To Stay Dry" ribbon?
