Its Raining Right Now

I forgot exactly what it is like to play by ever changing rules as you go along. When we are 8 to 12 we realize how games should be played. We also know that every game we play we should win at. Naturally as a youth we bend and add rules. You can almost win by default by confusing the opposition with these rules. A rule can transform from “you have to throw it with your hand” to “you have to throw it with your bad hand”. Then it is eventually turned into “you have to throw the ball on fire out of your nose near a starved lion”. Then at age 12 all creativity is lost and for some reason growing up means reading the directions. Well I happen to fall into the rabbit hole of an 8 year olds imagination. Mind you, this all occurs with limited communication. Little Nahima asked me “gioci volleyball?” which loosely translated is “get yo ass outside to play volleyball!”. What she had set up was 2 squares composed of bamboo sticks side by side similar to a volleyball court but shrunk down to about 15% of its size. Now when you think of volleyball, there are usually two things you think of; a ball and a barrier. Rubber orange ball, check. Barrier…ummm…the barrier she had set up was not even as tall as the 3 inch grass plot we were playing on. My initial reaction was ahhhhhh yeah spike city on this girl. Before I left Tucson I was perfecting my volleyball skills at my old high school. LETS DO THIS! I had forgot that the rules had yet been explained. I pushed it up in the air and she spiked it back to me over the nonexistent barrier. 1 point her. Touché Nai, we are playing hard ball huh? She served this time. She threw it up to herself and spiked it right into my square. 1 point Nai. Ahh playing dirty, I can do that. My turn…I throw it up and spike it hard at the ground by her feet. Dirt clouds filled the air and thunder boomed the valley. 1 point for me, right? Nope, turns out as the ball was in the air, Nahima had entered in the rule book “people named Brian must serve up cup cake balls every time”. I give her a cup cake shot but just out of reach of a good hit back. She used all her might and hit it out of both of the squares nearly to the other side of Bosa. 1 point Brian. Nope, if it goes out of the squares, no one gets a point. You can make your rules little girl, but I will use wisdom. Found out wisdom has no match against 8 year olds. I got right on the line and as she tried to spike my feet I hit the ball out of bounds just like she had before. 1 point Nia. What, WHAT??? Now I know how Mike Tyson felt when he bit the guys ear off. This went on until someone got 30 points. The last rule on the list is “Nahima wins”.