Tagger

The last time I played tag was three weeks ago. It involved me intentionally getting caught by two small boys, each of whom was playing a slightly different variation of the game. Carter was playing Freeze Tag (though a different version than I remember from my youth), while Archie was playing Monster Tag (which largely involves randomly claiming to be a monster … the “tag” part is just marketing to make the game more attractive to his brother). As is often the case with such family games these days, tag ended poorly with lots of tears and a sense that I wasn’t living up to my potential at something — the dad in me wants to empower the kids, but the child in me wants to win.

Times have changed. My own dreams of being a professional tagger died at age 10, mostly because I realized there wasn’t any such thing. Being quick and clever, I was usually one of the last to have brains eaten in Zombie Tag (in which everyone tagged becomes It, until the civilians get outnumbered), and I saw athletic scholarships and endorsement contracts with Wheaties in my future. Almost three decades later, tagged means other things: It’s the tedious custom categorization of content, or the graffiti I see on the abandoned car dealership where we once bought our Honda CRV.

Well, today it has another meaning, thanks to Evil Spock. It is now a game played by bloggers looking to help each other with post ideas while creating some new readership paths. I may not be as quick or clever as I once was, but this time I am thankful to be caught.

The game is this:

1. Find the nearest book.
2. Name the book and author
3. Turn to page 123
4. Go to the fifth sentence on the page
5. Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog
6. Tag three more folks

This turned out to be trickier than it sounds. Thanks to a recent rented cable modem failure, I invested in my own and wound up with a wireless router to boot. That gives my recent computer purchase extra value since my work is no longer tethered to our downstairs office. That means I can type wherever, and do so while waiting for various children to get jammies on and teeth brushed. The problem, then, is that I was mostly surrounded by childrens books, many of which reference counting to 1-2-3 but never make it to 123 pages. After grabbing and tossing a few too many Scooby Doo paperbacks, I landed on this very appropriate one:

Shredderman 2: Attack of the Tagger
by Wendelin Van Draanen (illustrated by Brian Biggs)

“… Can I please just go to school?”
She shook her head, but finally she sighed and said, “Go.” But then she noticed the clock.

It is interesting how much that little passage captures the background angst of the book without referencing anything about the plot. The whole Shredderman series (Secret Identity, Meet the Gecko and Enemy Spy) ends prematurely, but it is high quality reading. Carter and I enjoyed it as the first chapter books we finished together, not long after introducing him to superheroes. Although the finale has the feel of a solid conclusion, I hope author Wendelin Van Draanen finds a way to revive this character and setup. The website that is central to the book — www.shredderman.com — has some nice resources in it. There is even a nice game centered around the site being hacked.

Having fulfilled my duties, I now pass the buck to three people in completely different parts of the blogosphere. So, Kynthia, Mike and Liesl … TAG! Your it.