Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Two-hand touch

When I was a kid, I played touch football with some guys at church once. I remember they said that you had to touch with both hands below the waist for it to count as a tackle.

Child safety programs at school had successfully instilled in me an irrational fear of being touched below the waist, but this was not my entire objection.

Instead, I reasoned that it seemed counter-intuitive to insist that the touch be only below the waist while other sports, like boxing, look very unfavorably on contact below the waist. Imagine a match where every punch had to land below the other guy's waist. Certainly, that type of trauma has its own intrinsic comic value, but I predict any such rule would be unpopular among boxers.

Maybe it would attract different kinds of boxers. All the would-be boxer-intellectuals who shied away from pro boxing for fear of chronic brain-damage may finally get their chance (assuming they have unnaturally high tolerances for pain).

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