Page 181 - WhyAsInY

a Bit of DasH BetWeen tHe Kee anD tHe WaH
to the tune of “Who’s Got the Pain When They Do the Mambo?” being one of the more memorable ditties that I penned. In retrospect, I’m not sure that the closing line, “They’re great with their drives and their putts,” was the most tasteful of my efforts.)
But Tribe War would not end with Sing. Instead, there would be an “Apache Relay” (the name of which was never questioned by the Sioux, the Seminole, or the Chippewa), which pitted the four teams in a relay race throughout the boys camp, the girls camp, the golf course, all ath- letic facilities, the archery range, the waterfront, etc. The relay consisted of a number of legs equal to the number of campers and co-ops on each team, and each leg was a separate contest (for example, of canoe racing, basketball shooting, archery, running with a ping-pong ball that was bal- anced on a spoon, whistling a song after eating a saltine, etc.). A hatchet, wooden—for liability reasons, I guess—would be carried as a baton. The final leg was a long sprint of the four Young Chiefs from the water- front up the hill to the boys camp’s flagpole. Winning the relay was often sufficient to win Tribe War, but not always. Now, I guess that it’s pretty clear to you that Tribe War was “progressive” when compared with Color War, which was, I would assume, retrogressive. (I am sure that by now you are wondering why we are suffering through this exegesis; not to worry, these facts are essential to your proper appreciation of some later events.)
The athletic highlight of my Tribe War came not during the softball games, in which I believe that I performed creditably (I would remember errors; my mother had taught me well) but in the first soccer match that I had played since being at Camp Anawana. (That had been a regrettable day: I knew that my parents were watching as I let in two goals, goals that I should have prevented.) For some reason I was played at goalie, a posi- tion in which I had no recent experience. Perhaps it was because my speed afoot was about as good as my singing. As I knew next to nothing about how to play the position, and was neither tall nor swift, I adopted the only strategy that I could think of. I decided that the best way to stop my rather large and quick opponents from scoring on me was to get to
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