tysontrips

From his underground laboratories in Sao Paulo, Brazil it's tysontrips travelblog:

1, August, 2005

Grow Up, Tyson
Every once in a while tysontrips out on certain things. Today I was reminiscing about my childhood. I was realizing that I have been alive for quite a long time: 27 years. It is strange (and slightly depressing) to be able to remember events that passed more than two decades ago. Like anybody else, I have memories from when I was 8 and 13 and 19 and 23 which seem as vivid as if they took place yesterday. But in fact they happened ages ago. Ain't time funny? I remember people always telling me that someday I would 'grow up.' Someday I would be more mature. I usually laughed and thought, "I will always be this young and stupid." And in some ways I am. In some ways I haven't matured a damn bit. But one of the ways I may have matured over the last decades is that – whether consciously or not – I have begun to take fewer and fewer unnecessary risks. This is probably based on the wisdom that comes with age. Or the wisdom that comes with repeatedly getting your ass handed to you courtesy of the laws of physics After breaking my femur and my back and busting out my teeth 3 times (among various other mishaps which caused bodily harm), I wager that my physical person can definitely benefit from a period of decreased trauma. Maybe the best way I can represent some of the risks I subjected myself to on an everyday basis in the name of recklessness when I was as a child and teenager, is to list some of the stupid ways my brothers, my friends and I entertained ourselves in our free time. We invented tons of ridiculous, dangerous games during even the shortest periods of inactivity. Just give me and my bros a pile of rocks or a ball or something slimy and in no time a game would be created (often a resulting in an injury).

Above: Behind the innocent smiles was always a scheme.

Anybody ever played jellyfish tennis? I have. As I was reminiscing about my childhood today, I made a short list – which is definitely not all-inclusive – of some of the strange and self-destructive games we made up which could have (or should have) significantly shortened my lifespan. So here it is:

America's Stupidest Homemade Games
G-O, Go! (Circa 1985) - My brother Toren and I invented this one on the ski slopes when we were only old enough to use the rope tow, and therefore no ski poles. Basically the game was just a downhill ski race from the top of the slope to the bottom. The only difference was that it was full contact or kamikaze style. The one rule was that you had to engage your opponent at least once while making your way full speed down the hill in a tuck position. This usually meant skiing over his skis or cutting him off or just pushing him down onto the hard-packed run, but it always meant a big collision somewhere during the race. Of the two racers, the one who had the more minor impact or injury would then scrape himself off the snow and finish as the winner. I am truly surprised no major ligaments were torn during this game.

Coyotes and Bears (Circa 1986) - This is really the first physically destructive game I remember playing with my friends. If you are familiar with the game 'sharks and minnows,' this is simply the out-of-water version we adapted to land when we couldn't find a pool. In sharks and minnows, the object is for the shark to pull the minnows – who are swimming the length of the pool underwater – to the surface before they reach the other end of the pool. The minnow then becomes a shark and this process continues until there are no minnows left. When I was about eight we came up with our adaptation. The 'coyotes' try to run across my front yard without falling to the ground. It sounds easy, but the 'bear' is there to trip the coyotes by kicking out their legs. The game would move quickly and painlessly at first, but when only a few coyotes remained, they became tired and would start running slower. At the slower speed, the only way to 'trip' the coyotes would be for the bears to kick the coyotes' legs as hard as possible (even a push was sometimes acceptable to finalize the process). This was one of the most painful feelings ever. As a 'coyote' slowly limped across the yard, five or so 'bears' repeatedly kicked his unprotected legs as hard as they could, until he crumpled to the ground in agony. I remember lots of crying and fighting and bruising and numb legs at the end of this game, which never lasted more than a few rounds before an injury would disrupt it and my parents would come out – shaking their heads – and call it off.

Smear The Queer (circa 1987) - We didn't invent it, but this well-known game had a brief heyday in my neighborhood growing up until we realized it took more than the whole neighborhood gang just to tackle my brother, Tanler. One thing I really liked about this game was that it had a mob mentality to it. Whoever had the football was 'the queer' and it was everybody's job to 'smear' him. Totally barbaric. This game also had a historical significance, as we were growing up in the late 80's and early 90's, just as HIV was starting to make big news. What better way was there in middle-class, suburban America to perpetuate ignorant stereotypes and purge your homophobic rage than by playing smear the queer?

Skateboard Race (circa 1987) - Fortunately for us, I don't think this game lasted too long either. This one was just an all-out, downhill, kamikaze race while sitting on skateboards. After suiting up with crash helmets, shin guards, gloves, elbow pads, long pants and long sleeves, any number of kids on skateboards would gather on the street at the top of an incredibly steep hill near our house and cruise down, dodge a brick wall while turning a blind corner into potential oncoming traffic and coast down to the end of a slick driveway. One person, who stood downhill by the blind corner, was in charge of looking for cars to make sure nobody ended up underneath one. On the way down, any form of treachery employed to make your opponents crash into each other, the brick wall, the bank of bushes, or flip off their boards on the oily driveway was permitted and even welcomed.

Invincible (circa 1988) - The whole premise of this game – as represented by its title – was contrived in fallacy. On a camping trip when I was about 10 years old, my brothers and I were looking for some sort of entertainment up in the rugged, desolate Cascade Mountains. Apparently the answer was to find the steepest, most dangerous hill around and run down it at full speed pretending we were invincible. Looking back, this one is a real head-scratcher. Exactly what were we thinking? I don't remember who got hurt first or how long it lasted. But I do remember feeling very liberated screaming "INVINCIBLE!" while running, falling, jumping, sliding and rolling down the steep hill, tripping and smashing my knees on boulders, running straight into small trees and twisting my ankle on rocks, as the branches of trees I flew past scratched my eyes. But I just continued stumbling down the hill because I could have no pain; I was invincible. At least for a few seconds.

Pillow Boxing (1989 to 1994) - This 'sport', along with hallway soccer, reigned as one of the most popular at my parent's house for years. I was never as big a fan of this game as my brothers; perhaps because I didn't enjoy having a bloody nose as much as they seemed to. Basically it was just an endless round of boxing using throw pillows as the only source of padding against blows to the face. The game usually would end when somebody inevitably had blood pouring out of their nostrils and had to race to the bathroom to stop the bleeding. The only way the game would terminate prematurely is if one of the boxers sustained an injury serious enough to not be able to finish to the normal endpoint of spilling blood from their nose. Sometimes this more serious injury did occur because eventually the pillows became useless, as they were not attached to the hands of the boxers. At this point blows went directly from knuckles to face. Sometimes, as Kleenex was being stuffed into nostrils after the match, a dispute would arise over whether the bare knuckles had been used intentionally or not. After several years of this sport every one of the 15 or so throw pillows in the downstairs of our house was spattered with blood stains. I think the game fell out of favor sometime between when Tanler had to have the vessels in his nose cauterized and when Toren broke his nose playing football.

Street Surfing (1995) - You would think as we grew older we would develop better common sense. But contradictorily, we just developed more insatiable appetites for risk-taking. And when we turned 16 we had bigger and better tools (cars) to play with rather than skateboards and pillows. All you needed for street surfing was a fast car with a driver, a straight road, a surfboard (a piece of plywood) and a death wish. We would roll down both windows on the passenger side of the car and the surfer would wrap his arms around the section of the car between the two windows. In order not to end up under the back right tire you had to put yourself a little distance from the car. But this made it tricky to avoid a complete wipeout if the board came out from under you. What was really counterintuitive was the faster you went the safer you felt, provided there weren't any potholes in the road. When the car first started moving the friction on the board was so strong it was hard to stay on but as the speed increased the board started sliding smoothly. It never happened to me, but if the board did stick to the road or hit a bump and dropped out from under the rider, they had to have enough upper body strength to cling to the outside of the car with their feet dangling in the air at speed until the driver could stop. I never had the courage to exceed 45 miles an hour while street surfing but some of my friends wanted to put their names in the record books (or obituary page). At high speeds you really had to have a straight (and smooth) road in order to have enough time to accelerate to top speed. And not hitting any obstacles was key to...surviving. Eventually my friends didn't have cars that could go fast enough to continue to break their own records so they started going to the steepest, longest hill in town and attempting the record there. I think they eventually set the mark at 88 mph. But this hill had a sharp turn in the middle and a sudden stop at the bottom so record breaking was eventually done away with before anything major happened.

Rock Fight (1997 to 1999) - This might be my personal favorite because the level of injury sustained is based almost entirely on luck. We played this in high school and college on the beach in front of my parent's house. The two opponents stand about fifty yards apart on a rock-filled beach. The simple and insane object of the game is to hit your opponent hard enough with a rock that he decides playing is not worth the risk anymore. We weren't really trying to hurt each other but that is the outcome which inevitably comes with throwing rocks at each other, isn't it? The only rule is that the rock has to take one hop on the beach before it hits your opponent. In other words, a player can't throw the rock directly through the air and hit his opponent; at least not intentionally. What makes the game unreliable is that the beach is full of other rocks. So when the rock – speeding toward the contestant at 50 mph or so – takes a hop ten feet in front of a player on an uneven surface, nobody knows where it is headed. Sometimes the rocks bounce up to head level so you had to duck or lose your teeth. Or the stone might take an awkward skip and seemingly speed up, coming straight for the crotch or shin. That always hurt. The worst case scenarios were when the rock shattered into several pieces and they all came flying at you, or when other rocks became dislodged by the main rock so that several rocks had to be avoided at once. A proper throw would land just in front of the opponent, giving them no hopes of having enough time to judge which direction the deflected rock was going. The only good defense, I found, was to jump in the air and turn backwards, covering the back of your head with your hands and bringing your legs into your chest. You just have to hope the rock doesn't smack you in the spine or the neck and paralyze you. But really, it was a very exciting game. The adrenaline alone makes it worth it. I guess. And nobody was ever seriously injured; though I remember hearing a rock hit someone's shin so hard I thought I heard a crack.

Stickball (2000 to present) - I have the dubious pleasure of admitting I played this game within the last 12 months. This is just plain idiotic. This game was invented by me and my brothers on a trip out to our cabin on the Pacific Coast. It is the equivalent of the baseball game 'workup', but for cavemen. The batter stands about ten yards from the two pitchers who sit on logs among an ample supply of driftwood pieces. The batter chooses a long, round piece of driftwood as a bat and awaits the pitch. The pitchers alternate, throwing any size or shape of driftwood at the batter in hopes of striking him out. If he strikes out one of the pitchers rotates up to be batsmen, and so on. However, the batter nearly always connects with the large pieces of driftwood which are lofted to him from 10 yards away. So the only real way for a pitcher to become batter is to catch the flying piece of driftwood (or one of the splinters) in your hands as it sizzles past him after the batter smacks it with his bat. The pitchers have to be alert because the batsmen is swinging for the fences and sometimes the pieces of wood come whizzing past the pitchers' faces before they even have time to react. The paradox is that – if they ever want to bat – the players have to engage these sharp, speeding objects as they fly past them without being damaged by one.

Grow Up, Tyson
As the years have passed it's less likely you can find me pillow fighting, surfing the streets, or running madly down a mountain screaming that I am invincible (although that does sound cathartic). It seems like there is enough danger in the world without me unnecessarily subjecting myself to it. But I can still sometimes be seen cliff jumping, sky diving, playing Dr. Killabrew and generally taking the physical challenge for no apparent motive other than the experiencing the adrenaline rush that comes with almost getting myself killed. To the X-Treme!!! Grow up, Tyson.