Water capture the flag

I mentioned in my girls camp post that we played a rousing game of capture the flag adapted to a pool. So here is how it got started. The girls were playing a game of keep away with the priesthood with a blow up beach ball. Yep, thats two men to about 15 girls. The girls were getting skunked. So they came and pulled all willing leaders out of the hot tub to help them. Then of course we were beating them, now that the teams were ten to one in our favor, until a life guard came and told us we couldn't have blow up toys in the pool.

My girls being inventive and determined to have fun like they are found some little squish balls and proposed a game of capture the flag. But of course we had to improvise since there couldn't really be any sneaking and hiding in a small pool area. Amazingly one of our priesthood had never played capture the flag before so we had to explain it. We quickly split into teams and I was lucky enough to be placed on the team with the young priesthood Brother P who did know how to play. We also had the other priesthood brother H's wife and at least one daughter on our team, which turned out to be important.

So we get to playing. Brother H was very aggressive, which was no surprise. I also tend to be a little aggressive. Revealing, I know! Are you shocked? So I'm guarding our flag and Brother H is trying to get it.

He comes at me and my first instincts are to jump on his back and dunk him till he gives up, cause I haven't really played a game like this since I was sixteen and I'm just kind of an animal like that. But I quickly remember that, one we are both adults and, two we are both married to other people, and three we are very close to naked despite are modest bathing suits. These facts present problems that I hadn't anticipated.

My options for attack or defense are very limited by my resistance to skin on skin contact with someone else's husband. I felt I was reduced to utter humiliation as he came at me and I simply splashed him. But hey, that worked better than I thought so I splashed harder. He backed away and tried another angle. I decided to use my feet and kicked water in his face as hard as I could. Which worked quite well until he grabbed my foot! OK, seriously! How am I supposed to get out of this APPROPRIATELY?! I twist and squirm, splash and kick to no avail. Then to my horror one out of uncontrolled flailing kicks lands hard right in his gut! I felt awful, till I remembered he pretty much asked for it. He was a little more wary of me from then on.

I had no intention of repeating that scene so I stuck his wife on him as his permanent guard. She is very sweet, not very aggressive and there were several times we had to remind her he was snuggling her right up to our flag. Although I heard later that she did accidentally elbow him in the head at least twice so that was good (kidding ;)).

Unfortunately his wife's defenses didn't really last all that long and before I knew it he was back pestering me again. I found I could push him away with out too much skin contact so that became my new tactic. But of course this didn't last too long either and I had to enlist the help of one of his daughters.

This was pretty much my struggle for the whole game. He wouldn't give up trying to get our flag and I wouldn't let him get it. I had to fight my urge to dunk him all game, which I lost at one point. Oops! I did apologize to his wife, she just laughed thank goodness.

So now I know, ruff housing especially in the water as an adult takes on a whole new dynamic when you are neither married nor related in anyway to your male opponent. Cause lets face it I would have had no problem attacking any of my brothers or even brother in laws, but non family is just another story.

I have to say I was so impressed with my team since we won by a land slide. Brother P was a great asset and very good at planning attacks. It was such a fun game and as far as I know only Brother H came away any injuries from that game. Of course I felt just awful about that ;).