Let the games begin

Guys and games just go together.
I’m not talking about just sports – any kind of game will do – even if they have to make it up. The last couple of weekends, we visited with family. Without a television playing, without a sporting activity to attend, the guys created games to play.
A couple weeks ago, two of my husband’s brothers convened with us in the Wisconsin Dells where the men reminisced about old times and caught up with each other’s more current news. Being in the Dells, we checked out the area’s noteworthy scenery … the glacier cut valleys with lakes just beginning to thaw around the edges as spring creeps slowly into this northern state.
As we wandered alongside the ice captured water, the second oldest brother picked up a rock and skipped it across the ice. We laughed. It’s easy to skip a rock on ice. I threw a couple myself for a record number of skips. Ice fishermen still hunched over their fishing holes in the middle of the lake, but around the edges, spring thaws released a skirt of water. Only a thin layer of ice covered the water at the boat launch. We tossed rocks that broke through to the water beneath.
The youngest brother stood with his back to the thawing ice and tossed a hand-sized rock up into the air. It arched up and over the ice and landed gently enough to pierce, but not break through, the skin of ice. It wedged itself half in the ice and half out.
We laughed, and without speaking, established the rules for a new game. One after another we picked up various sizes of stones and tried to flip them up and over an invisible wall trying to replicate the brother’s feat.
“Make a circle,” a wife suggested adding a layer of structure to the game. Techniques for tossing rocks developed as the men tried out various sizes and shapes of rocks and flicks of the wrist. Tossed too gently, several laid on top of the ice. Others slid outside the imaginary circle. Nonetheless, we slowly formed a circle of hand-sized rocks caught on the top layer of ice.
Beside the circle of rocks someone pointed out a clear hole where a much larger rock had broken the ice, and the previous night’s freezing temperatures closed it up again. A sister-in-love challenged the guys again, this time to put a rock into the iced over hole. Several near misses created holes around it before an on-target strike broke through. Game over.
Tossing games captured the guys’ attention the next weekend when we went to St. Louis to check out my son’s new house. To insure a few moments of fun, the visiting young husband bought a Nerf football. He and my son disappeared with the Nerf ball into the backyard for a while and returned to announce their new game “Limb Ball.”
The flushed, excited faces of our mid-twenty-year-olds relayed that we definitely had missed all the fun by staying inside. Standing on either side of the limb, they had taken turns trying to toss the Nerf ball over the high limb for the other person to catch. If they missed, the point went to the tosser; if caught, the catcher received a point. If they didn’t make it over the limb, they had to switch sides and run to catch it themselves the next time.
We had missed the game, but we did not miss the tour of the house.
As the proud new owners showed off their first home, our son-in-love, pronounced it the best house ever for a game of “Hide in the Dark.” Under the rules for his game, we cut off all of the household lights and find a corner, a chair or a door to hide behind where the seeker will not find us as they wander around in the dark using only ambient light and intuition to avoid toe-stubbing furniture in their search for those hiding. The rule maker holds a record 45 minutes for standing behind a door while everyone else wandered around in the dark, passing him by repeatedly while searching for him.
The guys have gathered. Let the games begin.