The Politically Incorrect Nature of Fun

Posted by kuhar on September 23, 2007

What defines fun? It’s not defined by senators or Merriam-Webster. It doesn’t change with presidential administrations. Fun is intangible, which means that humans can only define it by experiencing it. No amount of lawsuits or legislation can change what’s fun and what’s not. All they can do is change what we’re allowed to do for fun, which is becoming less and less fun by the year. This brings me to the focus of this week’s article: Smear the Queer.

I know that if you’re male in gender, somewhere in your life you’ve played a hearty game of Smear the Queer. It may have gone by a different name, like Kill the Man, or The Sons of Ham (for the extra sensitive… hah) and it probably varied a bit in the way of the setting it was played in, but the rules were always the same. You know how I know that? Because there were no rules. The guy with the ball was the queer, and your job was to crush him as hard as you could. When he got crushed, he relinquished the ball and whoever came upon it was the next queer. The idea was to be the queer as long as possible.

The name of the game didn’t mean anything. It may have well have been a foreign language. We didn’t associate the name of the game with a degrading view of the homosexual community, or with a promotion of violence. We associated the name of the game with fun. It actually rolled off the tongue so nicely that it became one word… Smearthequeer.

Sure, kids got bruised up and banged up when playing Smear the Queer. If I remember correctly, though, it was VERY rarely that anyone would end up in tears. You knew the risks of the game before you started playing. You were never forced into playing, either. If you didn’t want to play there were other groups of kids and other activities to choose from. If you did choose to play, and you got hurt, you sucked it up and tried to get the ball back so you could get clobbered some more. It was how boys had fun. The boys came in from their recess or their weekend afternoons covered in mud and grass and bruises, but feeling refreshed and happy (not to mention strangely anti-aggressive).

The complete lack of rules also gave the brain a rest. I can’t recall a single argument that was stemmed over the rules of Smear the Queer, believe it or not. It’d take a real special kind of person to be able to argue the rules of a game with no rules. In fact, I can only think of two types of people on this planet who would be able to do it… lawyers, and politicians.

Somewhere along the line somebody got offended by the fact that boys like to play rough, and a lawsuit was filed. One by one the types of games that young boys have built in to their systems were getting picked off. It started with Smear the Queer, and then sniped wall ball (the one where you threw a tennis ball against the wall and tried to catch it on the rebound. If you dropped it somebody else got to play firing squad on your ass with a tennis ball), and eventually even tackle football wasn’t allowed.

Boys have this stuff hardwired into them. I know this because last time I checked it turned out I was once a young boy. We like to compete, we like contact… seems like this is the type of game we should be happy to see our kids play. It promotes the masculine traits that help a young boy turn into a successful man. It promotes competition, ambition, and hard work, and it doesn’t even have any rules. And whether you believe it or not, a little pain never hurt a soul. It strengthens you, and thickens your skin. If you ever experience real pain, or something truly tough, you’re able to handle it without a lawsuit.

The last hoorah of the baby boomers will be this political correctness wave, where names like Smear the Queer are given more meaning than they really have, and a game where a poor victimized young child might experience some discomfort are bad. I can already see it, and sense it. Our generation is rebelling against the hippie trash baby boomer generation, the same as they did to their ‘Leave it to Beaver‘ parents.

I know the day will come where my future son will have a group of friends over at my house and they’ll be looking for things to do. Silently, I’ll slip out to the garage and grab a football and bring it back into them. “There used to be this game I played when I was a kid,” I’ll say to them, “that had no rules, but was more fun than all the other games we played.” This group of kids, who’s used to having legislation left over from the baby boomers for wiping their own asses, will be baffled by the concept of a game with no rules. And so the return to normalcy will begin.

It will take more than just me to inspire a swing back to letting kids grow up, instead of keeping them sheltered through retirement. It will take many people just like me. In order for it to work, I have to know that my neighbor won’t snitch to the cops, and the cops won’t get offended and raid my house with a task force.

For anyone who has longed for a time like the one our parents tell us they grew up in, or one that maybe we grew up in, just know that you’re not alone. The change will come, and it won’t even be too hard. In the future, our generation will hold all the jobs of the people who are condemning children from growing up now. Thus is life.

Now… anyone for a game of checkers?