TToML 12: Indecent Exposure

Winter 2009. Living in Heritage Halls.

One of our favorite pastimes Freshman year was playing a game we called "Lap Tag." Why is it called that, you ask? Not really sure...but it's not quite as dirty as it sounds.

Here's how you play:
Odd number of players. One person is "it" and everyone else pairs up. Everyone sits on the ground with their partner, we preferred in a semi-circular formation (you could do a full circle, a line, whatever your fancy). You sit with one person in front of their partner...usually the person behind kind of straddling the person in front (ok yeah, the word straddling is impossible to not make sound dirty). That person who is "it" stands an equal distance from all partnerships, about 5 yards or so away. "It" look around at these partners and calls the name of two people who are sitting in the front. The object is for these two people to race to get up and tag the person who is "it." The catch? The person in back does not want their partner to succeed. So what do they do? Tackle them. Wrestle them to the ground. Make sure they do not get away from them. The person who does succeed in escaping and tagging the "it" person now has a new partner and the one who failed and is probably sprawled out on the ground somewhere is now "it."

We would play this game for hours. In any kind of condition. Warm, cold, rainy, snowy, muddy. (The mud was quite fun, I must admit.)

While I'm sure there are many funny stories I could tell about specific game play, I don't really remember that many. I know a young man grabbed my butt once without intending to, but that's about it. I could go into the real strategy of the game in figuring out who to call on so that you get paired up with a good partner, but that's not anywhere near as entertaining as this story is that I'm about to share.

There was one night where I was hanging with the roomies and probably some other people, when it was somehow decided that a game of Lap Tag was going to take place. Of course we were in, so we rushed back to our place to all change into our appropriate Lap Tag clothes, you know the kinds of t-shirts and sweatpants that you didn't really care if they got grass stained and that you could be somewhat modest in while wrestling.

Well, as we were all heading in to change, our dear friend Chris slipped in the apartment with us. I knew he came in with us and assumed everyone else did too. We were all in various states of being ready to go when I was standing in the hallway with Chris. It was then that I heard Amy's voice saying, "What are you guys we-AHHH!" And turned to see her bare legs diving back into her bedroom. I quickly spun around to see Chris facing the end of the hallway where Amy had just been, a look of shock on his face and a scream coming from his mouth as well.

Amy had just walked out of her room without any pants on and Chris was the one who saw it all.

I'm pretty sure I was laughing so hard that I had to sit down right there in the hallway and try to regain my composure.

From then on, one of the many catchphrases of our apartment was,

"There goes Amy dropping her pants again...."