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(Spoilers follow.)
The film “Tag” was inspired by a true story, first told in The Wall Street Journal, about grown men who set aside time every year to come back together and play, yes, the child’s game.
That’s wonderful. Men are fun-loving, goofy creatures who need brotherhood.
It clearly was a great time for the men, going by the film and the video snippets of the real thing.
Joe Tombari’s description of the value of the game says it well.
“The best thing about the game is that it has kept us in touch over all these years,” Tombari told the Mirror Online. “It forces us to meet and has formed a strong bond between us, almost like brothers.”
There are friends I have from growing up that I would absolutely love to connect with even annually through a bonding agent as ridiculous as a game like tag.
Wacky as it is, it’s safe, it’s benign, it’s rather responsible.
Well, generally. One man got into his friend’s house at 2 a.m. to get him. Another popped out of a trunk. Completely startled, his spouse fell backward, tearing a knee ligament, according to the WSJ article.
But it’s not threatening to anyone not associated with the players, and the danger is quite relative.
Overall, actions in the game sound simply memorable.
One was actually at a funeral. Patrick Schultheis felt a hand on his shoulder during services for his father. He thought that someone was just being there for him. Instead, he saw his friend Joe Caferro saying “You’re it!”
Many men also need activities that are good for their mental health. Setting aside time to play a silly game, even tag, together, should be encouraged.
Jared, Brandyn, Chris, Matt, you in?
(Maybe one thing is that all of these guys knew each other as kids. It was the original group. Perhaps it could be more difficult to pull together people who weren’t all friends with each other all at the same time.)
Since my parents have rejected me, I would absolutely love to have new family, even in a ludicrous way.
And this may also be why men need it: not just because of their natures, but because as humans, they are facing real problems that naturally harm their emotional state and need to address them. If not to get new family members.
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Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash