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Capture the Flag!

Francesca Silva

capture-the-flag.jpgLast weekend, we celebrated my niece’s birthday with a BBQ at one of the local beaches. As usual, we had too much food – steaks, chicken, corn-on-the-cob, and lots of veggies roasting on the BBQ, all washed down with pop and juice.

After eating ourselves silly, the kids went off to play while the adults lolled about chatting and trying to digest all the food we’d consumed. But when some of us started to drift off to sleep, I decided it was time to get some exercise.

No, not yoga this time – I knew there was no way I’d ever be able to persuade the men to join in (unfortunately). Instead, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea (oh-oh). I saw the kids playing “Capture the Flag” and noticed that there weren’t enough of them to make two full teams.

Let’s join them,” I suggested. “Let’s not,” my hubby replied. “Okay, I guess we’re all too ancient and out of shape,” I responded, knowing fully well how that would go down!

Let’s do it!” was the testosterone response from one of the men, so we approached the kids and broke into two “fairly distributed” groups, each group having some men, some women, and some kids.

My hubby somehow managed to convince his team that it would be beneficial for him to plant himself squarely in the “neutral zone” to keep my team from progressing past into their territory. So all he had to do was stand there and threaten little kids!

I, on the other hand, was dumb enough to agree to defend our flag, which I soon found out meant having to run around like a madwoman. And, of course, hubby’s team sent my nephew over to get our flag – my 5’7” nephew who’s a sprinter for his high school – need I say more?!

But I was determined that my nephew wasn’t going win the game by getting our flag over to their territory.

Strategy was called for.

So I let him run past me (like I could stop him) and grab the flag. But on his way back he had to run past me again – and that’s when I made my move.

I think it’s known as a “flying tackle.”

We both went down, with me (fortunately) falling on top of him. My nephew easily shrugged me off and then looked at me in amazement. “What the heck was that? Talk about vicious tackles! Did you learn that in your precious yoga?” Well, that last remark totally cracked me up.

Speaking of cracked, I then belatedly remembered my rib. I gingerly got up – it seemed fine but I was sure I’d be suffering the following day. In the meantime, there were other injuries to assess – my sister-in-law fell on her backside, my cousin bruised his ankle, and a friend hit his shoulder…. The kids, of course, were all fine, including my nephew, whose only “injury” was bruised pride at being taken down by a 52-year-old woman.

So we all limped back to our rest area to tend to our various wounds. Just as well we’d brought lots of ice packs for the coolers because we used every single one of them!

“So whose great idea was this?” my cousin asked, and everyone turned to look at me.

“Oh, so it’s my fault?” I retorted. “Like one of you couldn’t have been the voice of reason?!”

“Well, it’s not as if you’re in any pain”, grumbled my sister-in-law.

“Hey – that’s true!” I responded. “It must have something to do with my…”

“YOGA” everybody shouted out!

At that point, I decided to do something totally alien to my nature – I shut up….

[tags]daily yoga, yoga practice, exercises, kinds playing, capture the flag, broken rib[/tags]

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