The Muggle Solution!

Today I am off to visit a Pediatrician's office and then pre-register at the hospital for delivery. I feel quite grown up interviewing a Doctor. She has come highly recommended so I anticipate a good visit.

I should probably leave this post at that, leaving you thinking and believing how responsible and mature I am but I can't help but share the following article with you. I read it a few days ago and I'm still THRILLED about it!

It began:

"The seeker from the Bronx High School of Science had to jump a fence and follow the snitch down Fifth Avenue. He caught the snitch but it didn't count because his broom wasn't between his legs"

Do you know what this means?!

Look familiar? (Unless a spell has been cast on you to only see empty camping fields)

Muggle QUIDDITCH of course!

Kids in over 150 colleges and 100 high schools are doing it. (Not just the young-ins) Are you?!

Here are some excerpts from the aol article by Karen Matthews:

"In Muggle Quidditch, chasers try to throw the quaffle -- a volleyball -- through a hoop (hula hoop or otherwise attached to pvc piping). For defense, beaters hit opposing players with a bludger -- a dodgeball. The team's seeker runs after the snitch, a fast runner with a tennis ball in a sock that the seeker has to grab like the flag in flag football. The players race around after quaffles and snitches while holding their brooms between their legs.

"This version of the game is the best it could possibly work in real life, short of flying brooms," said Alex Benepe, commissioner of the International Quidditch Association."

There is a commissioner?! According to Benepe, exhibition games going on in the Northeast are there to announce the incorporation of the Quidditch association as a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting Quidditch and literacy education (two noble things)

I just love this..when make-believe goes hand-in-hand with reality. Isn't that what childhood is? Maybe that's why I enjoyed this article so much. In the chaos of an increasingly scary world there is still a corner of innocent imagination at play that brings that old feeling of childhood security to me again as an adult. There is never enough good news broadcasted.

And besides people getting out from behind the tv/computer/game system and getting great exercise, it sounds so fun! Who of us read Harry Potter and didn't dream of playing Quidditch ourselves?

So start a chapter of the Muggle Quidditch Association with the kiddies (young or old) in your neighborhood/campus. Go all out and make team jerseys and host weekly practices, all you need are a few household supplies and a little old fashioned imagination!