PAX: Goose, Honeysuckle, Lil’ Cuz, America’s Best, Paradox, Wet Tap, Maneater, Safety Valve, Pope, Bam Bam, Duke, Jackknife, Pikachu
AO: The Peltch
By: Goose
YHC has always been intrigued by certain moments in history that are defined by unique dynamics that are hard to picture or understand–like life on board the first manned space rockets, living in those long-houses in the frozen Scandinavian north with all your relatives, life during the black plague, having to walk or ride horses everywhere, life before the printing press, mosh pits, running naked in the ancient Olympics, those giant water tricycles at the beach in the 80’s, life before recorded music, handball, putting peanuts in a bottle of coke, and, of course, the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.
It’s hard to picture how grown adults could come up with the idea, and even harder to understand how they might decide to follow through with it and try to enforce the rules. (1.9 million acres of Indian territory split into 160 acre parcels that were open to whoever claimed them. People lined up on the border on horses, in wagons, and on foot, and waited for a cannon blast to start the rush at the appointed time.)
It ended up being hard enough on a tennis court sized simulation with only 13 men and boys much less 1.9 million acres open to like, everyone. I mean, there’s a whole football team named after the people who tried to cheat the system (Oklahoma Sooners–they must be so proud). So, given the track record of this PAX when it comes to both listening to rules and not cheating, YHC figured we should immerse ourselves into this moment in history in the way that only F3 Thibodaux can–with merkins and petty conflicts.
The rules, for those who cared, were as follows:
Each man was given a cone with a number on it to “plant” somewhere on the tennis court (aka the Oklahoma territory). They officially planted their flag and claimed their 160 acres by doing 15 kneel diamonds (start on your knees, fall forward into a diamond merkin, and push yourself back up onto upright kneeling position).
Three of us were already dead as a result of being trampled in the rush once the gun was fired, and then everyone with an odd numbered cone immediately died of smallpox. Life was rough back then.
We then started a long series of three-minute rounds in which each man would do one of the following for the duration of the three minutes:
-Maintain your claim: if you were alive and on a parcel of property that you had claimed (by writing your initials in chalk), you could maintain it by doing rotations of 20 squats (squatting on the land), 20 sweat angels (working by the sweat of your brow), and 20 LBC’s (raising your family).
-Take a vacant claim (vacated due to death or migration): if the former claimant is dead or is on another claim and not interested in fighting for his previous land, you could do rotations of 20 Freddys (4-count) (kicking the flag loose), 20 genuflections (kneeling down to uproot the flag), and 20 kneel diamonds (planting your flag). Ended with crossing out the previous initials and writing your own.
-Work on remedying your death: go off to the side and do rotations of 10 WWI sit-ups and 10 merkins
-Indian Battle: after remedying your death for a three minute round, you come back to life as an Indian, and you can either take a vacant claim or attack someone who’s alive and has a claim. A battle is accomplished via continuous rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors for the full three minutes. But, the loser of each RPS round has to do increasing numbers of Mountaineer Merkins (merkin with 3 mountain climbers 2:1)–1 for the first round, 2 for the second, 3 for the third, etc. And, the man with having done the most total m. merkins at the end of the round is the loser and is now dead.
Meanwhile, life on the prairie happens, so at the beginning of most rounds, it was announced that a certain demographic had met a tragic end and had to head on over to the death area. For example, everyone with a first (hospital) name beginning with the letter N or later (in the alphabet) caught typhoid; or, everyone under 5’10” was swept away in a flood; or, everyone with a birthday after June 15 died of an abscessed tooth, or everyone at a cone number 4 and under got snakebit, etc.
YHC must say that overall, this went much more smoothly than expected. There was a bit of a kerfuffle about how height is measured (Suckle uses metric inches, I guess), and another about whether immediately moving to a dead guy’s cone while the body was still warm (and the timer had already started) was legal. But, these were small potatoes compared to previous beatdown game conflicts, which was a nice surprise.
What was not a nice surprise was how consistently terrible YHC was at Indian battles. Jackknife published a psychological study of YHC’s predictability, and Honeysuckle ruthlessly used his AI satellites to read YHC’s mind before I had even decided what to
throw. It was disturbingly violent. It made the movie Far and Away seem more like a peaceful Enya song in comparison.
Ultimately, death seemed to have the upper hand overall. Most of us spent most of our time in the netherworld just to come back for a round or two of ruthless prairie life before dying again. By the end of it, each cone had so many initials written and scratched out, it looked like the wall of a gas station bathroom.
Once the last round was called, AB, Lil’ Cuz, and YHC were the only frontiersmen with two live claims (mostly due to late-game pillaging of freshly dead men’s acreage. I mean, if scavenging feeds the kids…). So, the Oklahoma Tennis Court was renamed Goosamericuz, or Lilamerigoose, or something, and we headed back to the flag. Valve prayed us out, photos happened, heights were measured and remeasured, and all went home grateful for antibiotics.
SYITG,
Goose