I should as well?
Wait. Wait. I saw the ball now. A guy named Rex had it and was weaving as he ran.
Should I go after him? Was he on the opposing team? Well, that seemed like relevant information, didn’t it? I should have been apprised of who was on what team. Printed rosters, perhaps, could be distributed at the start of each game. Or colored shirts distinctive enough to visually distinguish Team X from Team O? They likely had that for league games, but since this was a practice session, everyone wore ordinary clothes, mostly layers of sweats and thermals on this rainy, muddy January day. Still, surely it wouldn’t require too much organization if players wore either a plain white or plain black T-shirt even for practice games. Surely it wasn’t only newbies like me who would benefit from such?
Oh dear. I was the only person left standing in this entire part of the field. Everyone else was down near the goal at the south end. I jogged in that direction, trying my best to locate the—
“Sean! It’s Sean, right? Are you just gonna stand there all day, or are you gonna play?”
I looked at the huge guy jogging toward me. I knew his name was Bubba. Everybody on campus knew that. He was distinctive among the student body for his bulk—had to be at least 6’5” and closer to 300 pounds than 200. His head, with its closely-shorn dark hair and beard, loomed above everyone else on campus. I’d heard his booming laugh coming from the ALA’s front lawn on nights when they had parties over there and I had my window open while studying. He’d never looked at me before, though, and he might have been scary jogging toward me except that his brown eyes were friendly.
He stopped a few feet from me and put his hands on his hips. “Sean, dude, you gonna play?”
“Yes. Well. I was just trying to figure out exactly what I should be doing. To play the game, I mean. It’s rather fast-paced, isn’t it? And no one explained the, er, teams.”
He got a befuddled look and rubbed his palm over his hair. “Um. Okay.” He glanced down the field. He was sweaty and glowing in that robust, athletic way. He looked as if he belonged here—a cell swimming happily around in its host environment. Feeling as out of place as I did, I was envious.
“So, look, Sean, all you gotta do is prevent the other team from getting to the goal with the ball. Only instead of tackling them to stop ’em, you grab the flag out of their belt. If someone grabs your flag, you have to stop and you lose the ball. And that’s it.” His thick fingers flipped one of the blue plastic flags on the belt he wore around his waist. Everyone wore the belts with blue flags, even me, since I’d been handed one at the start.
I pushed up my glasses. “Yes, thank you. That sounds like essentially what I read online. But I’m unclear which of these players is on my team. What if I accidentally take a flag from the wrong person? I imagine they’d be quite put out.”
He blinked at me for half a beat, then laughed. It was a head-back full belly laugh that sounded almost musical “They’ll be quite put out! Ha ha! You’re funny, Sean!” He knocked my shoulder with one large fist. It would have sent me sideways if I hadn’t seen it coming and braced for it. “So funny!”
“Uh… thanks?”
“Which team are you on?”
I looked at him blankly. “That would be another point that should have been made clear to me before the game started. But I think—”
Bubba held up his hands in a wait gesture. “Never mind. You’ll be on my team, okay?”
I frowned. “Is Tray on your team? Because he told me—”
“Look, just forget who else is where. You’re on my team, got it? And that’s our goal.” He pointed down the field to the north end, which was the opposite of where everyone else was currently clustered. “If you get the ball, you head that way with it. If someone else has the ball and is running toward the opposite end, you run after them and grab the guy’s flag. And that’s all there is to it.”
“Yes, but how do I know if the person who has the ball is on my team?” I repeated, feeling like I was missing something obvious.
His brow furrowed. “Dude.