Sunday recess

Grade school recess was broken down into three separate factions that if mixed became a molitove cocktail of epithets that often ended with one kid calling another kid butt face, and the other piping back with poop ball. If the yard narcs weren't around to hear our prism of colorful vocabulary we'd get more daring: "Ass licker!" "Shit pants!"

And folks wonder why I all my jokes center around violent poop jokes. Remember - I'm a product of California's public school system, that's the best we could come up with.

This is how the boys broke down:

Elimination tag was the cool kids' realm, and they worked the system better than a certain president trying to skate out of serving in the Vietnam war. Inevitably the dorks would want to join Elimo tag, so the cool kids would rig the eeny-meeny-miny-moe process to make the daily ubergeek "it" - think a 10-year-old Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. The dorks were the second group, and if we, errr, I mean if they weren't trying to infiltrate the cool club, they were busy throwing dirt clods at the girls on the swings. Finally, there were the sports geeks. That's where I found myself. Name the season and that's what we played - Fall/winter was football, winter/spring was basketball and spring was baseball/kickball/whiffle ball.

You had to call the field. This was life-or-death important, moreso than pounding down your fruit roll up and food-stamp-bought milk pint. With ball in hand, you had to fight off the third graders who wanted the "field" for whatever odd game they were playing that day, like a pretend version of live Pac Man (don't ask, they also ate their own boogers if that explains anything), and beat the girls who wanted to double-dutch jump rope on the field (I watched some double-dutching last night, but jump ropes weren't used the same way).

Things haven't changed in 25 years.

I called a Sunday afternoon recess last week after be pestered by a handful work inmates, free world friends and even my ankle doc - Ian of Oakeson Physical Therapy in Glendale, Ariz. (he said he'd bust both ankles if I didn't give him some free publicity, so if things are hurting on your person head over to Oakeson and let their people feel you up).

These folks are hard core. With the Pats-Colts game on their TVs in the safe confines of their respective compounds, this motley bunch opted for a football game on a field that was more likely to yield more wrecked knees than touchdowns. With the number of craters, it was like playing football on the moon. Although, I don't remember Neil Armstrong saying "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Hey, why is there a syringe in my shoe?"

The threat of contracting a dabilitating disease that could leave us with crabs didn't stop any of us from diving for touchdown catches or becoming human shields to block an opponent from our ball carrier. We were Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. We were Dwight Freeney and Teddy Bruschi. We were Randy Moss and Marvin Harrisson. Every play was significant and each yard gained was a dagger strike at the opponent. It was a battle for the Superbowl, Fiesta Bowl and the Fremont Cannon all rolled in a grass-stained two hours.

It was a recess at school on a Sunday.

We played 5-on-4, which would have never happened in school. If someone wanted to play we told him, or her (Wife says I have to be more politcally correct, for instance, instead of watching midget porn I now watch "little people expressing their love"), to partner up. We could have asked Joe Meth Head, who was dealing a couple of dime bags to a pack of 12-year-olds near Ramada No. 2, but for some reason we didn't think football was his cup of tea or spoonful of black tar heroin. Whatever floats his boat, I guess.

And while I was on the side with numbers, guess who won the day? Yeah, the Fourbies. 9-7 (or 54-42 for those who don't speak playground-speak). Maybe we could have used Joe Meth Head of Ramada No. 2. With him, maybe we could have broken their Cover-Anyone defense.

In the end, though, it wasn't about the final score. Everyone walked away under their own power, with smiles on their faces and uttering the same question, "When are we playing next?"

On this day, when the two best teams in the NFL were on television in the Phoenix area, we were the Pats and Colts, and with better beer to boot.