"TAG! YOU'RE IT!" TAKES ON NEW MEANING FOR GROWN-UPS INVOLVED IN 23 YEAR OLD GAME...

          This is just too bizarre not to blog about...

          A group of nine guys have somehow managed to keep a game of tag going that started when they were friends in high school twenty-three years ago.   What started as a friendly game during a break at Gonzaga Prep School in Spokane, Washington, has evolved into an elaborate annual tradition spanning decades and all geographic restraints...  Apparently, once you're "it" in this game, it's an obsession to rid yourself of the curse.

           If you take this link you can read about the lengths these idiots will go to in order to "tag" one of the other guys.  The game that started during a high school break continued throughout that school year, and everyone involved assumed that whomever was "it" when the school year ended would be stuck with that stigma forever and ever... But at a reunion shortly after graduation the nine guys signed a "tag participation agreement" outlining the rules by which they would continue the game.

           The rules are pretty simple.  Every February it's open season on the other eight guys.  There are no "tag-backs", meaning you can't simply tag the guy who tags you.  Whoever is "it" when midnight strikes on the last day of February is "it" until the last day of January the following year when "hunting season" opens again.

 

 

           These guys have snuck into one anothers' houses in the middle of the night to make "tags".  They've breached security at one anothers' businesses.  Their wives are allies sworn to keeping them safe from one another during an entire month of every year, and even though one of the guys is now a priest, the game lives on.  Even though they live in various parts of the country, they stalk and hide from one another every February!

           You only have to read this segment of the story to understand the extent to which they take this "game":

"You're like a deer or elk in hunting season," says Joe Tombari, a high-school teacher in Spokane, who sometimes locks the door of his classroom during off-periods and checks under his car before he gets near it.

One February day in the mid-1990s, Mr. Tombari and his wife, then living in California, got a knock on the door from a friend. "Hey, Joe, you've got to check this out. You wouldn't believe what I just bought," he said, as he led the two out to his car.

What they didn't know was Sean Raftis, who was "It," had flown in from Seattle and was folded in the trunk of the Honda Accord. When the trunk was opened he leapt out and tagged Mr. Tombari, whose wife was so startled she fell backward off the curb and tore a ligament in her knee.

"I still feel bad about it," says Father Raftis, who is now a priest in Montana. "But I got Joe."