Maybe It’s Time To Toss In The Flags

We had our annual neighborhood football game on Thanksgiving Day. Not one single player was diagnosed with a concussion.

This makes it one of the safest Thanksgiving football games in our neighborhood’s long history. The orthopedic injury rate was also very low, although for three days every muscle in my body was so sore that I needed assistance putting my socks on. But I am now fully ambulatory and my long-term prognosis is excellent.

The reason for this rosy medical report is that we finally decided to play flag football. For years, we played tackle.

Without pads. Without helmets. Without brains.

It made sense at the time, because the kids needed an advantage in this traditional Kids vs. Dads classic. They only had to touch us with two hands, but we had to tackle them.

But as the years went on, an interesting thing happened. All of those kids turned 16 and earned their varsity letters.

This was ridiculous. The game was rough enough when the kids were young. I remember the very first play of my entire Thanksgiving football career, about six years ago. I took a hand-off and blasted through those defenders as if they were preschoolers, although several were already kindergartners. The little ruffians broke my eyeglasses.

I had to play the rest of the game with no glasses, which affected my performance less than you might think. I made a game-saving tackle, although it turned out to be the referee.

Every year, the game got rougher and rougher and rougher. We first realized it was a problem about three years ago, when one of the smaller tykes on the field got his nose bloodied by some big bully. However, I was able to stop my bleeding right away and I was fine after that.

It all came to a head last year (or maybe two years ago; an old football injury has affected my memory). We noticed that one of the dads was lying near the sideline after a play. We were so concerned that, several possessions later, we went over to check on him.

“Are you OK?” we asked.

“Zimbabwe,” he replied.

“Thank God,” we said, relieved.

But he still didn’t get up so we went over there a few minutes later and asked him where it hurt.

He replied, “Thursday week.”

We figured it was a concussion and we knew exactly what to do about it. We dragged him off the field so he wouldn’t be in the way. Turned out his concussion was minor, which explains why he believed he was Humphrey Bogart in “The African Queen,” as opposed to Katharine Hepburn.

Later in the game, another dad suffered a dislocated jaw, but none of the rest of us realized the seriousness of the situation because the guy kept pointing at his jaw and saying, “Mmmggfull.”

“All right!” we’d say, breaking the huddle. “Sweep left, on ‘mmmggfull.”’

Anyway, this year we brought flags. Call them flags of surrender if you will, but you have to admit it was the sane, prudent and reasonable thing to do, which explains why the kids complained about them and refused to put them on until forced.

Realistically, they had nothing to complain about. The odds were still on their side. There were 16 of them and seven of us. As a veteran Thanksgiving Day defensive back, I was accustomed to having about 13 eligible receivers flooding my zone, but I wasn’t used to all of them being over 6 feet tall.

Nevertheless, through sheer force of will, we intercepted a pass at a key point in the game. Unfortunately, it was the first play of the game, and it was a key point only because we didn’t make another decent play all day.

The kids were uncanny at smoking out the gaps (all seven of them) in our defensive scheme. We, on the other hand, were uncanny at throwing the ball into clumps of eight defenders.

Before we knew it, the score was 58-7.

I’m sure I’m not the only dad who thought wistfully of those games not so long ago, when we would deliberately let up on the little guys so they could complete a pass, at which point we would hammer the little tot to the ground.

However, it occurred to me that the kids’ newfound domination can’t be completely explained by the fact that the kids are getting older.

The dads, it seems, are getting older, too. This is not the most pleasant thought for us dads, and fortunately, I was able to put it out of my mind with the assistance of a moderate blow to my head.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review