The best game ever played...tribute.

When I was eleven I left the British Primary School (now known as The British School) to attend KISC (Kathmandu International Study Center). I was stoked beyond stoked. As the youngest grade in the school we were also the biggest, a whopping twenty kids. My brother, four years older than me and in the highest grade at KISC, was the only boy in his class along with three other girls. I do not believe he took advantage of the situation but that is another story.

I will always remember this year as one of the best of my childhood because it was the year when I participated in the best game ever played.

When I tell people that my class at KISC went on a week long trek it is usually greeted with buggy eyes and an incredulous exclamation that usually goes something like this: "What? They REALLY let you go off with your teachers for a whole week?" I wouldn't have thought that was weird until I moved back to Canada and field trips consisted of a trip to the pulp mill for the day (insert sarcastic thumbs up here). But yes, our class trip was the week long Gorkha trek. A historical area of Nepal where kings conquered and were conquered subsequently, but also a place where twenty boisterous youth had the time of their lives.

Day six outside of the village of Chiplote we discovered that the sloping hillside next to where we had set up camp is a natural maze of bushes. Awesome? Yes. Even better: the natural tunnels and hollowed out holes that just screamed "PLAY IN ME!" 25 year old me cannot remember the rules of the game excepting that there were two teams: the chasers and the chase-es. While struggling to recall the details of the game I am reminded of the Tenacious D song, "The Greatest Song in the world."

"This is not the greatest song in the world, this is just a tribute...couldn't remember the greatest song in the world..."

So this is what this blog post is all about. A tribute to the greatest game ever played. A tribute to the scrambling through dirt and bush, avoiding pursuit at all costs. Diving into holes, tearing our clothes on brambles, adrenaline pumping through our bony, pre-adolescent bodies. Hearts pounding holes through our skin, not yet realizing you can never go back to a time when you were truly happy (sorry Wordsworth). This is a tribute to the times before television, video games and ipods, when kids still played outside and invented their own games. A tribute to the times before kids demanded to be entertained.

Six years later I happened to end up a boarding school with my childhood crush from Nepal (I wasn't allowed to date him back then and didn't want to when we became re-acquainted but that is, once again, another story). One of the first things we reminisced about was that game. I was heading back to Nepal in a few months and all we could talk about was how epic that game was and how it could never ever be re-created. Eight years after that conversation here I am remembering it still. One thing for sure is that I will always look back at that time in my life and never doubt how good I had it, and never fail to miss it.