Handball

 I didn't really play sports growing up. Here's what I did:

• one season of cross country in high school
• tall flags one time in 6th grade and our performance was to "Stand Out" from The Goofy Movie soundtrack.
• double dutch jump rope like every recess in 5th grade
• "20 hits" in the front yard with my dad, which is where we get to hit the wiffle ball 20 times. One time I hit the ball like 3 houses away when he did his curve ball and I think he's never been prouder.
• sometimes at recess we played kickball or tether ball (until that one time the rope wrapped around my fingers)
• dance class in HS, which was for the kids who weren't as good as the ones who made the dance team and/or didn't want to commit to it. I'd like to think I was too busy for dance team...

That's basically it. Except for one more. HANDBALL.

Handball was to 1994 like gaga ball is to 2018. I played handball everyday at recess for years. I think I might have even been good. 

I remember learning about actual handball once, and we didn't play that. We played some other (probably way funner and better) version. I taught Aaron how to play this week and I transformed back into a 4th grader and remembered all of the rules. Here they are:

• you bounce the ball so it hits the wall and take turns with one other person
• the ball is one of those recess bouncy balls
• you cannot hit the ball with your bare hand, it has to be a fist or hands clasped together
• you have to let the ball bounce before it hits the wall and before your turn. 
• if the ball bounces twice, you're out
• all the kids wait until someone gets out so they can play the winner of the last game
• you can't catch the ball

But then we had a whole bunch of names for things that you could do that would get you out. It wasn't until I was telling Aaron all the rules that it was pretty obvious to me that a bunch of elementary school kids made these up. Here they are:

• a "baby"- when you hit the ball under the line (usually like 2-3 feet from the ground)
• a "poppy"- when you hit the ball and it lands in the spot where the wall meets the ground- probably because it pops back at you.
• a "waterfall"- when you hit the ball and it doesn't quite make the wall and rolls down.
• a "superman"- when you hit the ball against the wall without a bounce.

Then there were a couple bonus made up names for things you could do:

• "Doubles"- when you served you could hit the ball twice in a row so you could have a really big hit.
• "rainbow"- this was a thing, but I don't remember what
• "black magic"- sometimes you'd get like 2 of them per game (you had to agree on having black magics be a part of the game first) and you could pretend you were about to hit the ball but at the last second you'd yell, "black magic" and go under the ball making the other person scramble to hit it again.
• "catchy"- you got like 1-2 of them per game and had to yell out "catchy" before you caught the ball.
• "inner!!!"- (short for interference)- you yelled it when someone or something got in your way and then you got another chance. 

I don't know where my brain has been storing all of this information, but it all came back today. And now we've been playing handball on the side of the house every day since.