Everybody loves dodgeball!

Courtesy of my friend Karen, who is currently working with the Peace Corps in the Philippines:

It is amazing some of the things that I have learned in the Philippines. My latest, greatest lesson learned was about the do's and the don'ts of the classic recess game of dodgeball. I was trying to do a lesson about deforestation and how it drastically minimizes the natural habitat of animals, thus causing some species of animals to go extinct or suffer severe population declines. And I wanted to come up with a fun, active way to learn about this. So I came up with the great idea of doing a demonstration of this concept through dodgeball. Everybody loves dodgeball!

My audience was girl scouts in their fourth year of high school (about 16 years old) and the girls came from about 5 different schools. Filipinas are just the sweetest girls ever, you feel like you are their best friend when you talk with them. Another thing about Filipinas is that they are very "clingy" to each other (they are always found holding hands with their buddies, and they tend to travel in tight groups).

So imagine putting 56 Filipinas inside of a dodgeball square (about the size of half of a soccer field) and the game is about to begin. At first everyone was in a tight clump (ALL 56 girls). I figured they would eventually spread out once the balls started flying about. Then a few girls on the outside of the square lobbed the ball into the square. It was so weird, the balls were bouncing in slow motion but like 15 girls would get hit! Instead of breaking out of their tight clump to "dodge" the ball, they stayed huddled together screaming. Some girls even turned viscious and pushed their best friends in front of them so that their friend would get hit by the ball instead of themselves. After 7 minutes the scene turned so ugly, girls were falling all over the place and some girls were ending up in huge piles in the middle of the field. We had to cut off the game early. I was kind of in shock, I never believed that dodgeball could go so wrong.

So in the end, I learned very well that:
1) Filipinas and dodgeball just don't mix too well.
2) Never, EVER put 56 people in the middle of a dodgeball game. That's way to many and stampedes will definitely ensue.
3) Never believe that innocent childhood games remain so innocent (as in people never become viscious) when they are played by grown up people.