We have a lot of family gatherings for holidays and birthdays, and most of these take place at our grandmother's house, with my mom's sister's kids: Carolyn (21), Hawk (Harold, really, 19), and Robert (13). We are all two years apart, with Annsley and I filling the 17 and 15 year gaps. Most of our games take place in the basement of her house, which is pretty big, and is a circular "track" with lots of irregular spaces. The ideal setting for a competitive game of dodgeball. We started playing dodgeball when I was about 7 or 8, and we stopped about two years ago, when Carolyn was 19 and way too old for dodgeball. We used the usual method of deciding who was "it": everyone shouted "NOT IT" on the count of three, and the last to shout was "it." This part of the game could last a long time. These days Robert and I are the only ones immature enough to play. Sometimes we can entice Hawk, but never Carolyn or Annsley, and it's no fun to play with two or three. Lately we've been sticking to ping pong, and lately even I am beginning to enjoy the adult conversation upstairs.
-- Jared. Journal. 1996.