Just remember the five D's of dodgeball: "Dodge", "Duck", "Dip", "Dive", and..."Dodge."

The autumn after I graduated college (ten years ago) I was working for a place I loved. My workmates were friends and teachers from the Academy and we all had high hopes of the company becoming the Nickelodeon of the internet. Instead it folded the following summer.

To get over my disappointment, I threw myself into a solo bike ride down the coast. I was in excellent size two shape, had a solid, brand spanking new bike, but no real idea what I was doing, how I might (as I usually do) get lost in unfamiliar territory, or be caught on the road long after sundown, miles away from a place to stay for the night. I didn’t think of that before setting out. I just went.

Contrast that to my tentatively signing up, over a year ago, for dodgeball then taking nearly that long to actually show up for a game. I wanted to play in the park with others who felt likewise. But dodgeball is a game of violence, exclusion and degradation. What if I showed up and found a bunch of fully padded White Goodmans bent on making it to this years tournament?

(B. Stiller a.k.a. White Goodman)

They might, in their winning-means-everything fever, see petite and slightly out of shape me as easy pickings. And I’d have to slink off the field without scoring a single point (as I did every time I played a group sport during my grade school days) having publicly proven once again my athletic moronitood.

But, as it often goes, the worst of my preconceived worries were all wrong. The players, thank God, were more like these guys...

A game of exclusion it is not. And while winning is nice, no one keeps track.

But I was right, more or less, about the violence of the sport and my own athletic moronitood. During the last game I was on a streak. I dodged that ball, then this one, then another. I was about to score for sure! Then I decide to turn around and push a stray ball out of the way, thus turning my beautiful, womanly ass into a big, fat target. I can’t explain that brilliant move except through athletic moronitood.

I’ve made many more embarrassing mistakes. Embarrassing, at least, to me. There aren’t many rules in dodgeball. But I keep forgetting half of them. In my defense though I only listened to them once and they basically went in one ear and out the other. Game rules, to me, are like computer or cell phone manuals and other things I never bother to read.

And since the top of my head only reaches up to the average man’s clavicle, and most players aim for the chest area, this means I get hit in the face. A lot. On the plus side this also meant, in one case, being treated to a Guinness when the guy in front of me ducked out of the way and the ball meant for him (thrown by someone with a powerful arm) hit me square on the nose stunning me for a few good seconds.

And if the ball wasn’t dangerous enough, there is the ever present danger of another player tripping over the grass and slowly falling backwards on top of you even as you desperately try to roll out of the way. (Those things really do happen in slow motion. How is that possible?) And if the guy is about six foot five, this is, as they say, an oh, sh--! moment.

Also, being a woman who might lift a five pound weight only every now and then, I’m also finding it a real challenge to actually hit anyone. The ball will go in my target’s general direction but the target usually has enough time to step—not run—but just step out of the way. Or they reach up, over or down to catch it. And then I’m fetching stray balls until the next round.

But, believe it or not, over drinks after the last game someone turned to me and said, “You’re really good!”

And like a giggly girl I replied, “Oh, no! I’m blah, blah, blah, horrible, blah, blah.”

“No,” he said, “you’re blah, blah, agile, blah, blah, quick, the way you blah, blah.”

He looked and sounded utterly sincere and I didn’t get any I’m-just-trying-to-sleep-with-you vibe from him so...can this actually be? I, in the dodgeball world at least, am a decent athlete?

Maybe a tournament is somewhere in my future?