Not It

I was just reading in an old newspaper I was using to wrap breakables - can someone say "PROCRASTINATION"? - that in McLean, VA, a school has banned the game, Tag, because it had become too aggressive. Of course, this decision started a debate among parents, many of whom felt that the decision was intrusive and kept children from being children. According to the school, the version of Tag that had become prominent in the school yard involved grabbing an unsuspecting student and pushing him/her to the ground while other students piled on top in a 'pyramid' formation, and then the poor soul had to break his/her way out. Definitely not the Tag that I grew up playing. I don't know, part of me is horrified to think of my baby as a school kid being that poor soul at the bottom of a pile of his tag-hungry school mates. But then, I think that there are certain rites of passage, including playing games, playing them hard and rough, like Tag and Hide & Seek and Blind Man's Bluff - why our parents let us blindfold a friend and then goad him/her into chasing us without being able to see is beyond me! I don't know. One parent thought that the banning was too protective, and felt that she had to let her daughter know through recess play that the world can be a tough place to navigate. This included her daughter getting the wind knocked out of her on the monkey bars and getting a goose egg when a fellow student threw a rock at her head. And they call this "child's play?!"