Like Panem’s Hunger Games (and most parts of P.E.), dodgeball trains players to numbly endure the inherent cruelty and pain of existence. One woman’s outburst during a “trampoline dodgeball” event revealed the “game” for the barbaric custom it truly is — and although she now faces jail time, I’ll forever remember her as a martyr to the cause.
I’m not sure what “trampoline dodgeball” involves — besides trampolines, balls, and dodging them, obviously —although I’m sure it would require me to fall down even more than I do in the non-trampoline version. The bizarre hybrid sport is apparently popular at the Sky Zone in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where according to WISN, a birthday party “turned ugly” last winter. After Dominique Jude and her son were both hit in the face by a ball, Jude reportedly grabbed the 12 year old ball-thrower and according to a witness “was yelling for the other people in the dodgeball area to hit the child with dodgeballs in the face.”
Jude blames the Sky Zone for failing to intervene before the game got out of hand, and says she was just asking the punk (my words, not hers) how he would like a face full of ball. The Waukesha County district attorney has charged Jude with criminal disorderly conduct. If convicted, she faces up to three months in jail — but obviously it’s the barbaric custom of hurling balls at each other as fast as possible that should be on trial. Sure, Jude expressed her frustrations inappropriately, but that’s exactly the kind of base human behavior the game encourages.
Bear baiting, gladiators, jogging — it’s difficult to understand the barbaric lengths mankind will go to for diversion. Someday soon dodgeball will join those ranks and take its place as a shameful part of human history.
(via Huffington Post and WISN, image via Zoomar)
