Yesterday Stanford, Ansley and I played Field Crumpets. I originally described this game as similar to polo with whiffle bats, and without horses. After playing it though I think it's actually closer to field hockey, except without the little plaid skirts. Also there's a relative dearth of young Northeastern WASP-ettes.
Anyway, we were invited to play field crumpets by Dalibor, a computer science grad student from the Czech Republic. Of course that means he was actually born in Czechoslovakia, a fact that is not relevant to this story at all. Still, wouldn't it be strange if the place you were born suddenly became something else? Like what if New Jersey decided that it really didn't fit in with the rest of America (Huzzah!) and decoupled itself? In contrast to what happened when the South tried this, I figure a lot of people would actually be OK with it. Of course old New Jersery would probably want to rename itself to make sure it had a clean break and a chance at a fresh start. I figure the most likely choice would be to try to highlight its only redeeming quality (Shorelandia?) since there's really not much of a Lenni Lenape population there anymore. So, say you were unlucky enough to have been born in West Trenton, or Vineland, or (I'm sorry for even saying it) Pennsauken? Wouldn't that be strange? (see #4 here for an additional wrinkle to this scenario)
Anyway, field crumpets with the comp. sci. peeps (and Meghan from Spanish). The blue team consists of myself, Martin, Meghan, 'John', and someone other guy whose name I can't remember. John was foreign and when he introduced himself to those of us who don't know him we weren't sure what he said. He then said to just call him John. How about you just say your name so we can hear you and we'll call you that? Across the field we faced the red team: Tommy, Tristan, Molly(?), and Dalibor, who, being something of a Field Crumpet ringer, was relegated to the team with fewer players.
Despite being played with plastic bats and a child's Sponge Bob rubber ball, FCs is actually a fairly fast paced game. Or at least it is when Tommy, Martin, and I are playing. We (maybe just me) may have brought a little more competitive spirit to the game than was expected by the geek squad we were playing with. This resulted in me finding myself on the ground after making some diving lunge for the ball fairly often, as well as a healthy number of collisions. My face in particular had 2 very physical moments. The first was a brief but direct introduction to the end of Dolibor's bat (to be fair my face was very close to the ball at the time) and the second was a chance meeting with Tommy's shoulder. I really wish this latter one had been filmed since it resulted in my recoiling backwards and falling to the ground. My only regret of the afternoon was my difficulty in scoring on Dolibor. Three things make me feel better about this: 1. he's European and obviously knows his way around a soccer goal too, 2. I did get a few past him (though only on the side of the field that was easier to score on), and 3. it turns out the red team was cheating by leaving him in the goal for so long.
Unfortunately the 3rd, and tie breaking, game of the afternoon was cut short due to a deflated crumpet that had vaulting itself onto a fence post. Which reminds me of a great line from In To The Wild.
Anyone who's ever lived with me certainly recognizes it, since it's hung in my room since it was taken. Both of the older Barnebey children have similar poster sized prints around somewhere. Unfortunately the negatives to these have been lost, so there's no reprinting them. Last year I had it framed as the previous 6 years of apartment/dorm living had been particularly hard on it. Now I like it even more.
