This Thanksgiving, some families gathered around a table to retell each gratitude-evoking event from last year.
Some families joined the legal occupation of Wal-Mart and Best Buy, trampling small children to death in order to acquire the last X-Box 360.
My family crashed cars into each other while playing polo.
It’s called “Demolition Ball” and it tickled my redneck bone beyond any sport I’ve played since the New Deer’s Eve celebration. Back story: my young years weren’t spent in the libraries of PhD’s and their museums. I grew up in the pit.
THE PIT was that oh-so-cuddly place where all the demo derby cars go to have broken shards of metal torched off by guys chain-smoking three cigs down to ashen poles. I like to think of it as demo-derby-car limbo – the demo derby purgatory (has a nice ring to it). Old Buicks go there to float over the river Styx or be resuscitated for the next heat. From the pit, I watched my cousin Kent win several years in a row. One year I witnessed seven relatives crash the derbies.
Go me.
No really, I’m proud of my heritage. Where would I be without figure-8 races? Certainly not writing novels…
So when my brother-in-law Patrick suggested we play polo (minus the horses, white suits, clubs and million-dollar gambling pools) while using bumper cars, I signed up. Twelve bucks a head for thirty minutes seemed cheap. People paid more for a round of speedball back when I owned my Spider Compact 2000 and a handful of Tipmann squadbusters.
I didn’t expect to check off another bucket-list item of mine: play Quidditch. No, we weren’t flying (at least not in the air). But the ball worked like a Quaffle, a bludger and a snitch all at once. Honestly, I have no other sport to compare it to. Maybe lacrosse? Maybe… nah, Quidditch suffices.
Yes, some of the family went shopping. Yes, we shared what we were thankful for. But DEMO BALL was certainly one of our highlights.
Here’s a short vid from someone else about the experience:
Up here in the Pacific NW we call that there game “Whirly Ball”. Yayup.