We had a version of tag that we played at the swim club called "Bass and Minnows" , the minnows lined up on one side of the diving area , and the bass stood on the other side . When the whistle blew the minnows and bass would dive in and the minnows , frequently as many as thirty kids , all tried to reach the other side underwater without being drawn to the surface by the bass . If you got drawn to the surface you were out and the bass had that many less minnows to chase . The game took strong lungs , and even stronger limbs if
I happened to be the bass
, and a good time was had by all . Nobody groused because they were the first to go out , they just practiced more until they could either swim faster or break the bass' grip(not happening if I was the bass
) . My favorite bass tactic was to grab one minnow with my arms and one with my legs and let them swim against each other until they ran out of air , at that time I could easily stay under for up to three minutes , and then they would surface all by themselves . This worked whether the minnows were small kids or varsity football players and nobody ever complained when I dragged them to the surface . Injuries were rare and feelings were never hurt , yet some years after I had grown and left home I happened to meet the child of a fellow swim club member and asked him if they still played the game . He replied that he had heard of it , but they no longer played because some of the soccer moms who attended the club now felt that it wasn't good for the kid's self esteem to lose ! [:@]
Good grief "śNo Tag for YOU"!!
)
we got banned from playing tag. But we were playing on the jungle-gym and whoever was 'it' had to knock someone else off. A few broken bones put an end to that game. Come to think of it, most of the playground games we invented ourselves eventually got banned due to injuries.
