In Texas I grew up calling everything coke. Mountain Dew, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, Pepsi, Root Beer and Coca-Cola were all cokes. I forced myself to switch to the word soda.
My school banned a game we called "smear the queer". One person had a ball. Everyone else tried to tackle that person. When you were tackled you would throw the ball and someone else pick it up and run. Repeat. The goal was to avoid being tackled as long as possible. I was pretty good at it. I loved it. So much more fun than football and soccer.
We weren't allowed to play so we would sneak off the playground and play in the football field.
A few stories about it.
- I got hit in the junk hard enough to black out. When I woke up my vocal chords were stripped and I couldn't talk.
- I got a big cut on my eyebrow. We didn't want the teachers to know so 20 guys circled around me, hid me in the crowd and snuck me into the bathroom while we tried to clean it up and stop the bleeding. We eventually realized the bleeding wasn't going to stop. They all disappeared and I went to the principles office. He didn't ask what happened, just called my parents who didn't answer and then he drove me to the hospital for stitches.
- A new kid was playing. I went to tackle him and grabbed his chest from behind and slammed him to the ground pretty hard. While grabbing his chest I realized that he was a very manly looking 12 year old girl. Apparently I was the only one who hadn't realized because everyone was staring speechless with their mouths open.
Another game we played once... Our wrestling room was padded and had no windows. We turned off all the lights and had a royal rumble. Ten, 14 year old boys, in pitch black, wrestling. One kid was on his knees trying to stand up while another ran full speed and accidently kneed him in the face breaking his nose. I got body slammed and had a nerve pinched and could barely use my left arm for a month. We agreed with the coach, that was a stupid game and we never spoke of it again.