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November 29, 2015
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| He retired from his former job a couple of years ago. He was in his mid-60s. When he was in his company, he was a workaholic; but, now he had nothing to be a 'holic' about. After retiring, he started and restarted various sports. When he was young, he was a person who devoted himself to many sports. But as his job became busy, he rarely played sports. He started with jogging, after that he went climbing and hiking. He swam. He sometimes played tennis with his friends. He felt happiness while playing sports. But c he was too enthusiastic. When he was practicing for his first marathon race, he injured one of his knees. Now, he sometimes went swimming for rehabilitation. After the accident, his life became super free. On this day, he went to the library and went to this particular park that was not so far from his house. It was a sunny day, and he didn't like to be alone in his house. In the park, there was a group of kindergarten children and a teacher who played with the fallen colored leaves. A pair of old men were playing a game of go on the bench. It looked like fun to play their favorite game out in nature. "Butc" He could see a few children who
Without any thought, he asked the boy on the nearest bench, "Is it fun?" The boy raised his face a little but didn't answered. He felt offended and asked again, "Can you hear me?" The boy raised his face and this time said, "I was taught not to talk to strangers." And started back at his game. He gave up. He felt sad and looked around the park again. The group of kindergarten kids left and it made the sight stand out. Including adults, all the people, except the go players, were watching their TV games or smartphones. When he was a child, they played real games. Children from the neighborhood area gathered after school and played games until dark. They were 'hide-and-seek' (a tagger or a devil looking for the hidden children and after finding all the children the roles changed), 'foot-baseball' (a batter (kicker) kicks a soccer ball that the pitcher (roller) rolls towards base), and so on. He liked most 'kick-the-can'. It was a variation of 'hide-and-seek'. In 'hide-and-seek, if you find all of the hidden children, the game is over. But in 'kick-the-can', if you kick the can before the tagger gets you, all the captured children will escape from the prisoner's base. So, if the last hidden child kicks the can before the tagger finds him/her, there is a big shout of joy from the imprisoned children which seems like a fanfare of freedom. Once he remembered the joy of the game, he couldn't stop his feeling to want to tell it to the children in the park. He asked the children to join him in the game one by one. They were all speechless. They ignored him and kept playing their own games. He didn't give up. He found a child who looked the most timid and asked him insistently. Luckily, the boy showed a curiosity about his plan. He explained to him about the rules. Then he became a tagger and urged the boy to hide. The guy deliberately avoided the boy's place although he easily found the boy's place because the boy was not accustomed to play, and he looked in the most pointless places. The boy easily kicked the can. After a couple of times, the boy got the point of the game and the game became thrilling. The two go players came and told them that they would like to join. One of the men said, "Watching you two's play, we felt very nostalgic because we loved the game when we were young." He, of course, agreed with it. The three adults and one boy started to play 'kick-the-can'. The adults didn't need to be lenient to the boy anymore. They played hard. Soon a girl asked them to join in. She looked a little old for that game, she was a high school student! But who could refuse her, most of them were adults. Her high pitch cheering voice gave attraction to the other children, they soon joined in the game. After a couple of hours of enjoyable play, they left one by one, and he became alone. He felt a refreshing and comfortable fatigue. He realized that his legs didn't hurt and smiled. He didn't think that the children would start to play the game by themselves. But, at least, he could sometimes come here and play 'kick-the-can'. And he had a lot of other good games in case they got bored of it. |
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*tag :a children's game in which one player chases and tries to touch the others (L)
*lenient :not strict when dealing with people (L)