Balls. As a child, everyone played with them. Some of us discovered them sooner than others, and some of us never had our own, having to rely on the neighbor kids or the generous workers at the local Y. Some are used for sports, some are used to ride on, and some are used for chucking at people and then getting caught by your parents and being forced to sit in the corner for 10 minutes. Ever since the first time a spleen rolled out of a mammoth incision and bounced along, manking had been fascinated with the rolling, bouncing device. There are depictions of circles in cave paintings, so we can't be quite positive what those indicate. Knowing cavemen, the circles could've been a ball or their children, we're not quite sure what cave spawn looked like back in those times (although we're led to believe they look similar to our own infants). The first mention of a ball in its modern English usage as a device to be played with can be found in Laȝamon's Brut (Chronicle of Britain) being used in 1205, but evidence such as the ball courts in the blood-thirsty Aztec ruins (the ruins themselves thirst for blood) indicate that the orbs had been around long before the greatest language in the world had a word for them. Balls today are used primarily in sporting events, even though some of the less boring ones (see: hockey, curling, spelling bees; not basketball) don't use them whatsoever. The variety of shapes, sizes, and materials used in sports alone demonstrate the flexibility and adaptability of the ball to any area that it can be fit into.
Balls have also found uses in keeping children entertained (those huge rubber ones are awesome), machinery (what do you think ball bearings are? Squares?), medical therapy (balls are used in muscle memory, muscle relaxation, and coordination exercises),B.B. guns, juggling, pachinko, and probably other fields that I can't quite think of at the moment.
Now, as with paper, I've had plenty of opportunities to play with any balls that were made available to me. Recently, I actually purchased a three pack of balls, in a variety of colors (green, pink, and yellow are a variety). I attempted to juggle with them, but apparently this isn't something that you just can pick up in 5 minutes, so I decided that it wasn't worth my time. Much fun was to be had with the other activities involving the balls, though. It began with simply throwing it at the wall, a rather rudimentary procedure. Then I moved on to more advanced maneuvers, such as throwing it at things that were not the wall. This proved to be exhilarating. On a mad high of throwing the ball at things, I began throwing the balls at things with the intent of knocking them over, and in some cases, off of the furniture that they were resting on. Within minutes I found myself in the hallway whipping balls at the faces of people that I knew, indiscriminate of whether they wanted balls in their face or not.
Balls are overall quite versatile, able to go from blissful childlike fun all the way up to maniacal bloodthirsty ball thwomping. I'm sure tons of you enjoy them for their sports or sports-like applications, but for me, nothing will beat the look of pleading "why?" in the eyes of my ball-destined victims.
Of course, that thrill only lasts for so long, and balls can deflate and aren't edible, no matter how hard you bite (apparently). In the case of sports it's not so much the ball itself as the sports that are being played that amount to the excitement, so the ball is just taking credit for a team effort.
That sort of bad sportsmanship nets the ball an 8/10 in my rulebook.
Rule number 1: There are no rules.
Rule number 2: Cooler Ranch Doritos are better than Nacho Cheesier.
Stick to your other blog.
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