Musings Of A Muddled Male

Olly Olly Oxen

Bob Stevens
The Muddled Male

         I read a story the other day regarding drone pilots.  As most everyone knows, a drone pilot is a person who sits in a soft chair in a room surrounded by computer screens and electronic gadgets, flying a small aircraft that has no one on board and is often cruising half a world away from where the pilot is sitting.  At first it was thought that individuals already trained as pilots were best suited to be drone pilots since they already knew how to fly a plane and knew how the aircraft would respond to various control commands. 

 

But a strange thing happened on the way to the war, so to speak.  While some experienced pilots do make good drone pilots, not all do.  Unlike a pilot sitting in the plane, a drone pilot has none of the feedback that comes from feeling the motion of the plane as it dips, and climbs, and turns.  Young people who had never piloted an actual aircraft, however, but who had grown up playing video games were easily trained as drone pilots because they were familiar with controlling action in the game using only the cues from digital streams and pictures on a computer monitor.

That got me to wondering what kind of a warrior I might have been had the armed forces paid attention to the games we played when I was young:

Workup ~this was a game that followed the rules of baseball but there was only one team on the field and one batter.  The batter would try to stay at bat as long as possible without being put out by the team on the field.  Once the batter was out, that player would go to right field and everyone on the team would move up one position and the catcher would become the batter.  The skill gained from playing this game was stamina and the ability to out-run the person trying to put you out.

Red Rover ~ this game had two teams, one on each side of the field.  Each team would stand in a line and hold hands very tightly.  Then one team would yell, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send your man over”  which would cause a player from the other team to run across the field and try to run between two opposing players and break their arms apart.  If successful then the player who ran would take one of the players who lost their grip back to the side from which the runner came.  If unsuccessful then the player who ran would have to join the team whose arms did not break apart.  The two teams would take turns in this manner until all the players were on one side of the field.  The skill gained from playing this game was the ability to hold hands and keep playing with bruised arms.

Crack the Whip ~ this game was played by everyone holding hands and then starting to run in a long line until the person on the end who was “it” stopped suddenly to force the line to start running around the person who was “it” standing as a pivot point.  The person on the other end of the line was forced to run faster and faster as the line spun around the pivot until the whip “cracked” and the person at the end was flung out into the gravel of the playground.  The skill gained from playing this game was the ability to keep playing with torn pants and skinned knees and hands.

Anti-Over ~ this game was played with two teams, one hidden on each side of a tall building.  The first team would throw the ball over the building after hollering, “Anti-Over.”  The team throwing the ball would try to throw it over the building in a way that would make it difficult for the other team to catch, because if they did then they would all sneak around both ends of the building with the one who caught the ball trying to “tag” as many of the throwing-team members as possible while the throwing-team tried to run around to the other side of the building without getting tagged.  Those tagged had to join the team that caught the ball.  The advantage of the catching team was that the throwing team didn’t know whether the ball was caught unless they heard, “Anti-Over” which meant that the ball had not been caught and was being thrown back, or until they saw the other team sneaking around the building to tag them.  Even then they did not know which way to run because they didn’t know who had caught the ball.  The skill gained from playing this game was deviousness and subterfuge.

Of course there were also the games of Kick the Can, Mother May I, and Run Sheep Run, all of which taught skills of stamina, sneakiness, and the ability to hide in place without being seen.  The games always went on into the night until someone hollered, “Olly, Olly, Oxen, come in free” and we all went home.

         After talking this over with Ann, my wife, and wondering why the military had never tried to recruit me she said, “I doubt that they would have used you since you always ran home crying when you lost.”