The Variable Rules of Wall Ball

Back in the day when comic strips in the paper had a chance of being funny, wise, and/or witty, there was a Calvin & Hobbes Sunday strip in which they were playing a ball game, making up the rules as they went along, and arguing about the made up rules. The game was called "Calvin Ball."

I am happy to say that the difficult transition into Daylight Savings Time has resulted into two hours or more of daylight after dinner, and the fantastic weather has driven my children outside to play. What a concept, eh? Outside to play. Huh. I am so proud. (Sniff, sniff.) Lately, my children (collectively known as the Dufflets), have been developing convoluted rules to a game they call "Wall Ball." Tonight, after dinner, and after a cupcake and a half from the Lemon Tree to celebrate my son's half birthday (any excuse for a Lemon Tree cupcake, I say), I got wangled into playing a game of it with them.

Before I get into the rules of the game, I have a few things to say. One, the rules of Wall Ball seem variable to me, and rival those of Calvin Ball for their randomness. Two, I have such poor eye hand coordination that it is difficult to believe, after watching me, that my eyes and hands are controlled by the same brain. Third, I have no peripheral vision whatsoever, a problem which is exacerbated by the fact that I now have a cataract in my left eye which I don't have the time to get fixed. 

So most things to the left of me look like they are swimming in Vaseline. Fourth, I'm afraid of fast moving balls. If a ball gets near my face, I panic, because I am aware of my complete inability to catch (see "Two" above) and thus protect myself from being nailed in the face (specifically the nose) by the ball. The only games with balls I can play with any success are golf, because you have an infinite amount of time to line up your shot and think about it and you can be fairly certain the direction the ball will take; and tennis, because, at least with the people who are willing to put up with me on the other side of the net, the ball isn't going all that fast, I have a giant racket with which to protect my face, and the ball is coming from pretty far away so I have time to line myself up.

So back to Wall Ball. The object of Wall Ball is not to get out. There are no points, just outs. We stood in the driveway with my son holding a tennis ball, and telling me the rules in random order. He then flung the tennis ball at the wall above the garage door, and it bounced on the driveway and he caught it. This, I was told, is what you are supposed to do. You are not supposed to 'double touch' the ball, which is not the same as bobbling it (which is the only way I can catch a fast moving ball) but rather if you touch it, and then it bounces after you touch it, whether or not you eventually catch it.

After several hundred times doing it incorrectly and having my children reassure me that I was "not stupid, just 42," I figured out that if you double touched the ball, then you had to run to the garage door and touch it before someone else manages to save the ball from rolling all the way down the driveway and fling it back at the wall. The way you know if the ball hits the wall before you hit the garage door is that the thwack of the ball against the brick sounds very different from the thud of a human flinging himself against the garage door at full speed. 

So, if you're like me, and you can't see very quickly, you just listen for which sound comes first. If the ball gets there first, you get an 'out', if you get there first you don't get an out. Anyone can catch or throw the ball. There is no such thing as turns or out of bounds. The ball often went charging down our long, steep driveway. If you finally got the ball behind the third seam in the driveway, you were in "rainbow", which means you have to fling it from the "rainbow zone" (behind the third seam) and if you couldn't hit the wall from there (which I certainly couldn't, because one of the few things I do worse than catching balls is throwing them) then you also got an 'out'. The number of outs you can get before being shut out of the game is negotiable both before and during the game, depending upon how fun the person who has the outs is to play with.

Some rules I never understood. Somehow, whenever I stopped the ball with my foot before picking it up because I am too old and fat to go tearing down the long, steep driveway after it, and too wise to dive across concrete to get it, I was told that was a 'double touch' and I had to run to the garage door or I'd be out. Both my son and daughter were able to pluck the ball off the ground when it was rolling without getting out. I'm not sure what the difference was, other than that they seem unafraid of hard ground and they were in charge of Making Up Rules and I was Not.

I'm still pretty sure I don't understand half the rules, and the Dufflets were so happy that I was playing Wall Ball with them that they indulged me by allowing me sixty-five thousand outs. So I offer this challenge to all you parents out there: tonight, after dinner, as the tacos are mixing in a toxic way with the german chocolate cupcake in your belly, go outside and play Wall Ball with the kids. You don't have to understand the rules. I never did. The kids will make them up as they go, and everyone will end up laughing at how Mom can't understand why she just got out.