The Artful Dodger

By Timothy Whelan

Here's a story I still tell about an Acton kid.

Our games have amazing parallels in life. By playing and competing, we learned the important caveats of success as adults: Follow The Rules, Celebrate Success, Give 100%, Handle Defeat: a whole kit if "isms" we've been applying daily for more than twenty years. We learned about how to get along and succeed through them, and we trust these games to teach our kids the same valuable lessons.

I learned some new games when I moved to Acton in 5th grade and went to Douglas, then Conant. I arrived a buzz-cut blond from Phoenix AZ and was welcomed to New England by a January Nor easter. I had to adapt -- and fast! My neighborhood kids up there at Pope Road & Great Road played at ice hockey, street hockey, floor hockey, sledding, snurfing, and skitching. They'd even invented cultural torture games like wedgies & pinkbellies. Brand new games for a brand new life. And while my course of indoctrination might have side-stepped a few, there was one game that seemed to be institutionalized in the Acton schools: Bombardment.

This was a game of fear and intimidation for some, a mostly one-sided contest where the strong punished the weak. And it was programmed into the gym schedule like white on rice. If it was raining, or we had a substitute or any excuse at all: "Let's play Bombardment!"

We've all played this game of dodge ball or prison ball without duress, but in Acton there was a twist: we played it indoors in the smallest space possible. The organizers considered it best to spare no quarter to the defenseless in this game, and your voluntary participation was, er, mandatory.

So they'd march us off to the gym or some smaller room, and by 8th Grade this game was still around and we still had to play it, only this time you got a locker with your Bombardment. We'd choose up sides, and someone was picked cruelly last, but it wasn't who you might think: it wasn't Kenny Pope.

Kenny got picked right after the omni-athletes. Kenny would probably be the first to tell you he wasn't given the gifts of a sports star -- he was slight and short, nearsighted and asthmatic. A smart, good-looking kid, but no Jenner, no Spitz, no Dr. J. Except in Bombardment. In a game designed to exploit the weaknesses of his ilk, Kenny Pope was truly The Artful Dodger.

As the game began, we quickly picked off the sitting ducks. In turn, we'd shield ourselves behind the less nimble and those whose coping strategy was to serve themselves up early and get out. The usual contingent remained, when more advanced skills were needed to survive. The court opened up as kids went out of the game, widening the no-man's-land which straddled a line dividing the two sides. Kenny Pope owned that line.

The rest of us still on the court thought we'd earned it: we threw hard balls that couldn't be caught. We caught what came at us and dodged what we couldn't. We razzle-dazzled by using the ball we'd just caught to deflect the next among an orchestrated attack. The best players mastered that defining skill: the boom-boom play of catch-drop-catch, keeping your cool under attack and catching one ball after another. We were the best...

...until a ball went slowly wayward into the no-man's-land near that line. Even the very best players retreated, because the easiest way to remain the best was to give yourself time by staying near the back. Chasing down a ball headed into enemy territory guaranteed trouble -- we drew fire just taking two steps forward; it was a low-percentage play which Kenny turned upside-down. He was a specialist, and he plied his trade better than anyone, maybe ever. It was Kenny Pope who came to the front and got that ball for his team.

That he was still in was no surprise -- he was The Artful Dodger and he always remained in, but where did he get that skill? Kenny Pope. If you were his teammate, you just sat back and watched the show. He'd perfectly time his sweeps in a swift arc that returned him to the back, where he was completely unhittable. He'd always pass off his ball to the strongest arm, and smartly capture another. His sorties were quick as lightning, dodging everything high or low, always bringing back a ball, and sometimes two.

If you were playing against Kenny's team, well, all of this was pretty frustrating. Here was this kid taking balls away from your team when you were bigger, stronger, faster... this couldn't be right! But there he was again, right up in your face, taking every imaginable chance, putting on his patented moves, always bringing back another ball. I personally unloaded on Kenny hundreds of times, throwing dozens of absolute strikes from just feet away which he somehow eluded -- incredibly, unbelievably, even magically. Over and over, Kenny came forward, drew every shot, didn't get hit, and his team won the game. Kenny Pope. The Artful Dodger. Amazing.

In the Spring of eighth grade, I finally got Kenny Pope. I didn't actually throw the ball, and now I'm glad I didn't. But there was as much of me in that ball headed for Kenny's head as anyone. In a low moment, we had conspired to set Kenny up near the end of a close game. By this act, we'd acknowledged him as the best player -- he'd proven it over and over, and we admitted as much when we connived his trap. We intentionally sent a ball to stall near that line, appealing to his instincts to defy the risk management that was his own pure art form. And we hid a ball.

Sure enough, Kenny took the bait and Tom Murphy, John Flannery and I burst on him in a coordinated triangulation of fire beyond anything I remember in those thousands of games. Kenny dodged them all, but it took that many diversions to conceal the flight of The Killer Hidden Ball coming from Rich "The Rocket" Brague. Poor Kenny never had a chance. Brague let loose a 40 mph powerball which Kenny picked up too late to avoid. The elation I felt realizing that ball had a really, really good chance of hitting Kenny turned to shock and emptiness when it really, really did. Like a freakin' freight train. A Bulls-Eye Dead-Center 100% Kill Shot With Power.

Maybe it was the shot we'd all hoped to throw, but it was for sure the shot we'd all hoped to avoid. I think the word we used was "wicked." When that ball hit Kenny Pope right between his eyes, nose and forehead, shattering his glasses in every direction and putting him on his butt, he became my hero. That moment of horror -- there was no reason to believe he wouldn't be seriously hurt by such a viscous ball -- revealed the emptiness of revenge and a thousand other things to me. The whole myriad of lessons 4 years in the making had been laid at my feet like an Aesop's Fable: the values of assumptions, ability, judgment, persistence, risk, conceit, fairness -- real life all wrapped up in this stupid game of Bombardment.

Kenny got up and walked away OK, probably with a new lesson of his own which swelled and turned purple. We shared a moment of great relief there among the co-conspirators. I remember feeling like it was the end of an era, and feeling the great respect for Kenny I have to this day. The Artful Dodger had proven everything that was important and useful, and I actually got the message. I knew right then I was an adult.

Thanks Ken. You were the best. I guess I owe you a new set of glasses.

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