Enemy Defender

I love my friend Mike. No seriously. He's awesome. He and his lovely fiancée Stephanie hosted a barbecue up in the canyon last night. It was kind of spur-of-the-moment for me, since I had tests, work, and meetings pretty much all day and wasn't at all sure that I'd be able to make it. But make it I did, and I brought Michelle and Tevan along for the ride. Well, Tevan, since Michelle got an invite on facebook and was planning on going with or without me. 

First of all, I learned a valuable lesson: my boyfriend's sense of discovery and adventure even overpowers his desire for food. So if I plan on eating at any reasonable time, don't set him off on a hike to go look at something. Because he will get to the end of that hike if it kills him, and if he has to drag/leave me behind, so be it. We went to look at this road that appears to tunnel into the side of a cliff near the park we were eating at and I had thought we'd just be taking a quick jaunt up the side of the hill to look at it. Nope. Once he got a good look at it, his sense of adventure kicked in and we were going all the way there. 

Now to be fair to him, I was just as curious to see where that mysterious road went, but my driving need to eat something substantive in the very near future, coupled with my woefully inadequate footwear (note to self: when going anywhere that's not a movie, campus, or to a restaurant, slide-on tennis shoes are a horrible idea) put a big damper on my curiosity. 

But being the trooper that I am (I know, I know. I'm amazing, it's true) I plugged along right with him, and frankly, it was worth the extra effort to see the look on his face when we finished a particularly difficult climb and reached our destination. 

But that's not the point of this entry. Not really. It was a nice side story though. No, the real fun began when we traipsed back to the pavilion where everyone had gathered and, after we'd eaten, we decided to play games. The usual games ensued. Ultimate Frisbee, for the most part. Then we had a brief trip down memory lane and played games like Duck Duck Goose and Red Light Green Light. I love college. We spend so much time trying to reclaim the childhood we tried so hard to forget in high school. 

Then Mike stopped us all and told us that he had a special game called Enemy Defender. It sounds super cool right? I was thinking of all those long nights playing Commander, where you're dodging from place to place trying to outsmart the other players. Lots of strategy, lots of skill. 

Well it definitely wasn't that. 

Essentially, you silently pick one person in the group to be your enemy and one to be your defender. Then you do everything you can to position yourself so that your defender is always between you and your enemy. Simple enough, right? Just remember that everyone else has picked enemies and defenders too, and they're trying to do the same thing. So what really happens is that everyone just runs around like chickens with their heads cut off until we're too exhausted to move anymore and then you declare the game over. There's no winning or losing. There's really no point to it at all. 

Except that it's hilarious. 

The first time we played, I was laughing too hard to really do much of anything. The second time, we actually kind of did "win" because somehow, we all ended up pinwheeling around Mike, and when we got everyone to stop moving, we were all standing in a straight line. 

I'm not sure I'm more pleased that we had so much fun playing a pointless game, or if I'm embarrassed that we did have so much fun playing such a pointless game. Because we definitely played several rounds of it.