Dodging the dodge balls

Dodge balls were flying at me, right and left. I jumped out of the way of an oncoming ball that narrowly missed me. As the balls whirled passed me, I couldn’t help wondering why I had put myself is such a dangerous position.

I walked into the Hart field house just a few minutes before the game. I had seen dodge ball played before and thought it looked pretty fun, but I was never daring enough to actually play the game before. But I thought it would make an interesting story for my blog.

The teams gathered together before the game to talk to the refs. But something was not right. A friend of mine, who was playing on one of the teams, called me up and told me they didn’t have enough girls on the team and would have to forfeit if they didn’t find another girl soon. He gave me a pleading look and I knew I was not going to like what came next.

“Will you play on our team?” he asked.

I told him I had never played before and would be terrible. I pleaded with him in return to not make me play. However, he was persistent and I felt bad that his team would have to forfeit if I didn’t play with them.

So I ran up to the girls’ locker room to change and went back to play with them.

I hung back most of the time, letting the strong men do most of the work. I would retrieve a stray ball and then pass it up to one of the guys. It was a pretty good system.

But I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that I was the last one on the team still in the game with three opponents coming in fast. My teammates tried to encourage me, telling me what to do. But I had no idea what I was doing and, to be honest, my arm muscles were extremely lacking.

I dodged all the balls until they were all on my side. Then I had to throw them. I completely missed one girl. But on my next try I succeeded in getting a girl’s foot. I was so excited that I actually hit someone that I didn’t even see it bounce off her foot to the arms of another teammate.

I was out.

I had fought a good fight but, alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

The game went well after that and my team won in the end. It was a really exciting first game for me.