Woodland Elementary School: Playground Confidential
Transcript
00:00PLAYGROUND CONFIDENTIAL
00:03Woodland Elementary School came with its own proving ground,
00:06although outsiders often wrote it off as nothing more than a simple playground.
00:11Those of us who ran through that unforgiving and cruel jungle know better.
00:16The playground at Woodland was actually a bit schizophrenic.
00:20There were sections designated as safe for grades K-3, then other areas deemed suitable,
00:26for the more discerning fourth to sixth grade crowd.
00:29This 38th parallel was never actually marked with a physical line on the asphalt or anything,
00:35but the younger kids instinctively knew when they were getting perilously close to crossing over it.
00:42It was Stowe's version of a prison shock collar, only without the explosive charges.
00:47The K-3 crowd had to content themselves with games like hopscotch,
00:51which was barely a game in the first place, and the dreaded small swings.
00:56The teeter-totters were also divided between amateur and professional grade,
01:01although the one game that became universal was the sudden jump from the lower position,
01:06allowing gravity to take care of the victim in the higher position.
01:10One popular playground game evolved from the innocent version we all played in the school's
01:15so-called multi-purpose room. For a while, it was the gym for indoor P.E. classes,
01:21then it morphed into the lunchroom for meals, then became a gym again until the artistic urge
01:26took over and it became the auditorium for school talent shows or outside performances or whatever.
01:33While it was still a gym, however, we played the game known as dodgeball.
01:38Dodgeball was the straightforward version. There's a ball, dodge it. There was a natural
01:43upper limit to how much pepper could be put on those odd rubber balls, only sold to schools,
01:48apparently. Throw, dodge, retrieve, throw again, hit, leave. These were all graspable
01:55concepts to a fourth grader. Somewhere along the way, dodgeball became fireball. Fireball
02:01was similar to dodgeball only in the sense that fast-pitch baseball was similar to slow-pitch
02:06softball. Fireball was serious business, played by serious people. I remember one guy at Kempton
02:13Middle School who could pick off any target of his choosing from across the entire gym floor.
02:18You could try to catch the ball, you could try to get out of the way, you could try to feign
02:22injury and leave, but Mark was eventually going to nail you with that fireball.
02:29Death by round rubber was in the cards. Once Mark got through picking off most of the opposing team,
02:35one unfortunate survivor who spent the entire game hiding behind others would be the last one
02:40standing. The P.E. teacher would declare a free-fire zone, meaning there were no more
02:46lines standing between competitors. Mark would stalk his prey for a few minutes, then deliver
02:51a crushing blow from three feet away. I think we ended up giving Mark both ears in the tail one
02:58time. There was another game that was actually banned by the principal during my time at Woodland.
03:05Many of us can still remember the last words we heard before our collective lights went out,
03:10Red Rover, Red Rover, let Mikey come over. Red Rover was definitely a team sport with two lines
03:17of players facing each other from a distance. The idea was to link arms and form an impenetrable
03:23human chain. A captain would select a challenger from the other side and lead his or her team in
03:28the taunting chant, Red Rover, Red Rover, let, insert name here, come over. With that simple
03:34request, inserted name would try to break through the chain by any means necessary.
03:40If he or she was successful, a player would be sent back to the other side.
03:45If he or she could not break through, they became the newest link in that chain.
03:50This process of brute force elimination could stretch on for a while, I remember.
03:55The Red Rover rot set in after more than a few insert names here came on over as requested and
04:01failed miserably. Either they got clotheslined by the strongest links, or they inadvertently took
04:06out a few links of their own during an open field tackle situation. The Red Rover victim
04:12to champion ratio became far too lopsided for the principal's liking, so he sent out a general
04:18bulletin that our Red Rover playing days were over. I remember a few people were sorely disappointed
04:25that their best head-butting days were now behind them, but it was a banner day for insert names
04:30here everywhere. One afternoon at Woodland, I watched two of our janitors drill a hole in the
04:37playground blacktop. They installed a tall aluminum pole and anchored it into the ground with cement.
04:44One of the janitors attached a long string to a hook at the very top of the pole,
04:48then attached what appeared to be a volleyball to the other end of the string.
04:53Without much fanfare, the internationally ignored sport of tetherball had come to stow.
04:59None of us knew exactly how the game was supposed to be played, but eventually the PE teacher did
05:04take us outside and explain the basic rules of tetherball. At long last, here was a game that
05:10made as little sense as possible, and we actually stood in line waiting to play it. The best part
05:16was that helpless feeling at the very end as you watched your opponent wrap that ball around the
05:22pole at lightning speed. One version of tetherball started out as a straight punch service,
05:29with the goal being to get past the other player and wrap the entire cord around the pole in a
05:34certain direction. This could be done through brute force or finesse, depending on the player's
05:40anger management skills. The other version called for the ball to swing slowly around the pole a
05:46few times in one player's direction, and then players could pounce on the ball at will.
05:52This was the version of tetherball that confused me the most. What other game on earth started with
05:58one team watching helplessly as the other team loaded most of the bases? That three-turn advantage
06:04was devilishly hard to overcome, yet we would dutifully watch the ball wind around the pole
06:09like lemmings until that third spin. Tetherball was clearly a game sold to school administrators,
06:15not to the kids. One game unique to Woodland was not really a game at all, but more of a dare.
06:22The back of the school's designated playground extended into a small woods. To keep students
06:27from wandering too far into those woods, rings were painted on several trees to serve as borders.
06:34The woods on one side of those border trees looked pretty much like the woods on the other side,
06:39but rules were rules. We were not to travel beyond those ringed trees ever, ever, ever.
06:47Of course, there was no faster way to get some of us to disobey a school rule than by telling us
06:52not to do it. By the time I was in fifth grade, the mythology of the land beyond the painted
06:57trees had become huge. There were stories of evil men who kidnapped trespassing children,
07:02who were of course never seen again. That was a good one for me. I would sometimes even stand
07:08guard near the ringed trees and look for anyone even a little suspicious. There were also tales
07:15of bears or coyote packs hiding in those woods, just waiting for free kids' meals. Perhaps the
07:22best deterrents were all of those apocryphal stories about the punishment that awaited anyone
07:26who was caught behind those trees. In the unspoken Woodland criminal codes,
07:32crossing over into the forbidden zone during school hours was at the top of the list.
07:38I knew a few people who paid dearly for that brief taste of life outside the compound.
07:43I found out later, however, that there was a nice little trail that ran through those woods,
07:48and it ended at one of the least scary places in Stowe, the Stowe-Kent Shopping Center.
07:54The school system spent years scaring us away from Kresge's department store and the A&P.