Our first guest writer is the East Coast comedian Joe Dinkin. My volunteer position this summer requires me to play games and sports with many many children for long hours under the hot sun. Usually, it becomes boring, but today, I played the best game of four square ever. I hope you are all familiar with the basic rules or this might not make very much sense.
It all started as a relatively standard Livingstone (the name of the park this happened at) game of four square. Being somewhat older and larger than most of the players, it was not long before I ended up in four square. Once I was in, just for kicks, I officially changed my title to Supreme Dictator, staged a coup, and made it virtually impossible for anyone to get me out.
Quickly, I went mad with power, as you might imagine. I began inventing rules left and right, such as "you have to do a popcorn, 18 claps, right now." or "opposite corner" where everyone had to run through the center of the game to the corner of the square opposite them, crashing into eachother. And I occaisionally put multiple people in a single square, when I didn't want to throw either out, just yet. I'm the kind of person who should never be given power. Ever.
And I played favorites very obviously. A fat little kid in one square bowed to me and I switched him immeadiately with the annoying little girl in three square. At one point I called "communist revolution:" and started jumping up and down. Two of the other players followed my lead, but the third didn't and said "wait, if this is a communist revolution, I shouldn't be following along." and didn't jump. I called the other two out.
At one point a kid made up a nonexistant rule that I had violated. One yelled, "who votes that that's a rule and Joe's out?" I said, "Hey this isn't a democracy, you can't vote." He rallied the six year olds and said, "who wants a democratic revolution, so we can vote?" and they all raised their hands their hands forcing me out of power and four square, or should I say, my seat as Supreme Dictator. It was not long before I regained power by using an eight year old girl who had made her way into four square as my pawn, using her to do my bidding. She cooperated very well, calling out completely made-up commands that I whispered to her, just to see what the other players did, and getting kids out. Soon, they all recognized I had regained power, but there was nothing they could do about it, because I wasn't actually in the square.
And we made up extremely, devious, malicious ways to get people out. She would call "stealth bomber war" and throw the ball over the head of the player to me, at the back of the line, and I would spike it through their square from behind, getting them out.
But soon the game fell into massive civil wars, I had to institute term limits, ("you have to get out of three square in thirty seconds") and it lost it's fun. I called, "the ball is a land mine, everyone run away!" They all did. I took the ball and went to play dodge ball at the other end of the park.
But it truly was the best game of four square ever.
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