March 14 -- Games, Games & More Games

Our visit to Adelaide coincided with the World Police and Fireman Games.  There were cadres of young, athletic-looking men and women wearing official looking badges and decked out in athletic warm up gear boasting their country name and colours.

Not sure where the concept of vocation-oriented mini-olympics got started but it was thriving here in Adelaide -- at least for the police and firefighters and their entourages.  Didn't see anything on whether this was the 1st or 10th (or whatever Roman numeral would be appropriate) edition of the event but I was pretty certain these games hadn't been around as long as the original Olympics.  All in all, the games sound like a great opportunity to form a team, travel someplace exotic to compete with others who also had a team and liked to travel.  It's also a good excuse to meet people from all over and drink beer.  Come to think of it, it's not unlike some softball teams I've been on if you consider Akron, Ohio, and South Bend, Indiana, to be exotic places.

I don't see any reason this concept of vocational-centric games should be limited to Police and Firefighters.  So, I'm thinking of organising a World Games for English Majors.  But all that training and preparation to get ready for some dashing and jumping and kicking of balls might be too much especially for those who have an MA in English.  We definitely lost our "on field" edge somewhere in the stacks in a library whilst having our nose deep in a book.  So maybe if I do organise this, we'd feature some spelling, parsing of sentences, and explicating of poems.  Afterwards, we'd go have beer.