Commonplace

Dodgeball

The bane of my primary-school existence. For some reason it took me a long time to warm up to the game of dodgeball. This is probably due to the fact that I didn't learn to catch until late 3rd grade, and that I was once struck in the face and had my head thrown into a brick wall while merely trying to cross the court to reach another activity (the dodgeball court at our school spanned a walled area, and was highly inconvenient for non-participants). Also, dodgeball players were real jerks. I eventually could hold my own, but the intervening time left me with too many unkind memories.