Talented And Gifted

This past summer, you may remember that I spent a week out west in the mountain city of Colorado Springs, Colorado. It’s probably like many cities that call the Rocky Mountains home; the air is thinner, the forests are more abundant, the views are picturesque, the REI Outdoor Sports Stores are bigger, and the speed limits are greater. However, there are two very specific attributes that allow you to distinguish the Springs from so many other towns in the Mountain Time Zone. They are listed below.

1. The Air Force Academy makes sure that the planes per capita average for the city is well above the national average.
2. Kids are not allowed to have fun at recess.

The former is self-explanatory. The latter? That’s YAB-explanatory.

The Associated Press is reporting this morning that Cindy Fesgen, the assistant principal at Discovery Canyon Elementary in Colorado Springs, has taken it upon herself to ensure that the one fun part of school be removed from the agenda: recess. (Personally, as a band dork, I wouldn’t know what recess is. In middle school, my idea of a good time consisted of leaving at the end of lunch to goof off in the band room. And that, friends, is #72 from the List of Things I Avoided Mentioning to Katie While We Were Dating.) It’s not that Fesgen has altered the space-time continuum as to remove the 12-20 minutes immediately following the children’s mid-day meal; no, she’s just put the kibosh on a recess activity that’s older than the meatloaf those kiddies just dined upon.

She banned Tag.

And while I wish I were talking about that abhorrent body spray, I’m actually referring to the playground game in which a simple hand touch can turned the hunted into a hunter. Yes, the one playground game that doesn’t require any sporting equipment, team formation, strategy, captaincy, uniforms, scorekeeping abilities, and lung power will no longer be allowed. It’s FORBIDDEN. It’s PROHIBITED. It’s..it’s-

“It causes a lot of conflict on the playground.” said Fesgen.

See ya, handle. It’s time to fly off of you.

Before I decided that musical instrument mastery was the way to get chicks, I did at one point participate in recess activities. In elementary school, this is all we did. It was the way we decided who was the best athlete in class. It was the way we killed time until some wonderful teacher would buckle like a belt and get us one of those red playground balls. It was our passive-aggressive means of showing interest in the opposite sex by using a game of caustic aggression to display attraction.

(Kim Zawacki, you never could catch me.)

And I’m guessing the totalitarian regime that is Discovery Canyon Elementary banned all variations and versions of Tag.

Freeze Tag, a harmless permutation that actually gave both sides a way to win or lose, is probably out on account that its reference to subzero, wintry temperatures may cause adolescent depression. Red Rover is probably misconstrued as another term for dog fighting, and the American Government has zero tolerance when it comes to dog fighting. Tag Heuer maybe an excellent manufacturer of luxury watches, but Fesgen knows that Tiger Woods endorses the product, and he swings metal clubs violently for a living. That guy who dated Rachel on Friends? Stay the hell away from our school. German exchanges students were deported for merely a mention of “Guten tag.”

Our guess? In elementary school, Cindy Fesgen is horrible at Tag.