The Deetz Wars

When I was younger, a bunch of friends and myself started working at an outdoor job. The job was really easy and gave us a lot of free time. The job wasn't the most fantastic job ever, but at 17 years old, it wasn't bad. You were outside, chilling, had free time, and were with friends. Usually that last part is a good thing, until you're dealing with my type of friends. We used to Table Top each other all the time, which was basically when someone got on all fours behind a person while in conversation, and the person talking to the victim would push them and they would fall over. Quite quickly, this game was banned by our superiors.

Next came the Flooding game, which was simply waiting for the victim to drink from a water bottle. Quickly, you would squeeze the water bottle, thus flooding the water into their mouth. If you've ever had this happen to you, it is not pleasant. Water comes out of your nose, and it stings for a good 20 minutes. Just like table topping, this game got negative responses from those above, so we found something less mature to do.

Finally, came our ultimate game. We ended up calling it Deetz, and it was basically using a water bottle or fist or other object to hit the victim in the nuts, thus resulting in an overload of entertainment, as long as you weren't the victim, because then it was an overload of testicular pain.

This game got so bad, that at one point in our work day, both hands were hung over your crotch to protect yourself from fear of a Deetz. A friend puts his hand to wave at you, your hands instantly went over your crotch. Someone turns a corner and sees a player in this game, hands went over crotches in sync with each other. You were asked to move something or pick something up, you searched the perimeter for anyone who might ruin your day.

You know how there is a food chain of hierarchy, where those at the top rarely get killed by a predator and those at the bottom take the shit from everyone above? That's exactly how this war went. I wasn't at the top of the Deetz Chain, but I also wasn't near the bottom. I think that every summer, I ended up with a fairly large positive Deetz-to-Getting-Deetz'd ratio. I was probably around a 2.5, meaning I gave out 2 and a half Deetzes for every time I was Deetzed. We used all types of tools, including water bottles, rocks, punches, punches from behind(hurt the most), a yo-yo, tennis balls, and so many other random improvisations. We had one kid become the McGuyver of Deetzing. He was the one to bring in a yo-yo, he used random shit lying around to make some impressive and creative Deetzes. He eventually was awarded the title of ninja for climbing up in a tree, waiting for a victim to walk buy, dropping down and simultaneously punching him the nuts as his feet hit the ground.

The funny thing about this game was that no-one ever told us to stop. I think our bosses found it too hilarious to ask us to stop punching each other in the nuts, and they definitely got some great laughs out of it.