This essay will begin assignments for DMF 203 in this Blog

Sam Hoiland
Reflective Essay 1

When I was in middle school I remember playing a game in PE that was, in my eyes, the greatest thing since Pokémon. We called it: Lord of the Rings, but it was really just capture the flag with some added components. There were two teams. Each team had control of one half of the field and if a team member crossed the boundary onto the other team’s side, he or she could be tagged. Once tagged, you would have to sit where you were until one of your teammates came and rescued you.

On either end of the field there were four cones set up in a square. These were “safe zones” for anyone who could make it across the field without getting tagged. The safe zones were also where the flags, four white discs, were held. You could run with the disc to get closer to your side but in order to capture it you had to make a successful pass across the dividing line. The point of the game obviously was to get all of opposing team’s flags before they got all of yours. The objective was fairly simple, but it was the means to the ends that made the game interesting.

Pride, chivalry, honor, what did they mean on the field? Nothing. They were as flies to a hippo, a minute distraction from the larger goal: WIN. Competiveness; you don’t know the meaning of the word until you’ve lived the experience. After a game of Lord of the Rings the class returned to Math not as a whole but as Red team and Blue team, still seething with defeat or explosive with victory. That poor algebra teacher.

The moment right before the game began was the most surreal. I closed my eyes, I could hear my heart pumping in my ears, feel the hair on my neck bristling, and the adrenaline and fear washing over me until the teacher shouted, “Ready… GO!”

“RUAAAAGGHHHH!!!” I wasn’t sure if it had come out my mouth or everyone else’s but it didn’t matter because I was no longer me, I was someone else entirely, something else entirely. I was an unstoppable force, hurtling across the endless field, more agile than ever before, my senses more attuned and keener than –

“TAG! Gotcha Sam.”

Damn... I probably should have opened my eyes.