BY ANDREW GREENBLATT

In print | Published February 4, 2010 — Updated February 05, 2010 13:34

In the history of Swarthmore athletics, there are two things that amaze me. The first is how Will Gates continues to survive when he thinks Gummy Bears and Sour Patch Kids fulfill a serving of fruit, and the second is how Swat athletes despise Kids’ Night Out. Since I only get a thousand words, which can’t possibly describe the absurdity of Gates’ diet, let’s talk about the latter.

Kids’ Night Out is an event hosted by Swarthmore College Athletics that gives kids in grades K-8 from the town of Swarthmore the chance to play sports with Swarthmore athletes for one night. I’m completely aware that I’m in the minority when I say that I love Kids’ Night Out (a minority of one, incidentally), and I’m committed to changing that culture. My transformation plan begins and ends right here, with this list of ways to make one of Swarthmore’s most frustrating traditions hilariously awesome.

1. Play Kickball

Forget that you hate kids for a second and remember a simpler time, a time before thesis projects and Sharples, a time when a couple of days a week, you got to play sports with everyone in your school. What I’m talking about is Phys. Ed. class, where no matter how pathetically bad someone was at sports, they had to play or they were going to fail and blow their shot at getting into, well, Swarthmore, I guess. This was an incredible time that most of us failed to appreciate while it was going on. Now that we’re surrounded by the kids who kicked at the bottom of the order, how much do you want that back? I’m dying to see some of the people here attempt to play sports, just as bad, I bet, as they’re dying to see me choke during Wing Bar after reading this sentence. This is why Kids’ Night Out rocks; we get to relive Phys. Ed. class traveling no farther than to our state-of-the-art field house. Kickball is a fantastic idea for two main reasons.

First and foremost, pegging is allowed. Secondly, remember back in elementary school when if you were any sort of legitimate person you were good at kickball? If you sucked at kickball, you sucked at life. It was plain and simple. Back in the day kicking butt in Phys. Ed. class was the only way to really earn respect (two ways if you count pecking a girl on the cheek in the nurse’s office — oh wait, three ways if you count being able to eat that mix of ketchup, pepper, milk and bacon that your friends made at the lunch table). This is your chance to regain the awesomeness of being the best athlete in school. Here at Swat, it’s all messed up. Swarthmore values things like intelligence and integrity, but why make your head hurt thinking about that stuff when you can pound a red rubber ball 250 feet over the center fielder’s head? At Kids’ Night Out, for three hours you can be the coolest kid of all time. These kids have never seen the sheer power that a college athlete is capable of on the kickball field. This is a time to harness that awesome force and become legendary…

2. Act Your Age and Your Shoe Size

While there are a fair portion of kids who are over the whole “being young” idea and now think they’re the coolest thing since “Twilight: New Moon,” there are a ton of children who are still living in the world where they can’t wait for their parents to go out because their babysitter is the absolute most amazing person they’ve ever met. At Kids’ Night Out, you can be this person. Trust me, if you give your attention to the right kids, they’ll fall in love with you. You know the kids too, the ones just dying to show you their behind-the-back-dribble or who insist on knowing every detail about your social life (on the flip side, ignore the girls yapping and gossiping about their social lives on their cell phones, the kid who is the 6th-grade starting quarterback who gets off on being way stronger than 5th-grade girls… not good looks). If you play your cards right, the world is at your fingertips. Keep in mind that at Kids’ Night Out, you are in charge. You make the rules. So if you want 10 of the “coolest” volunteers to go over and fart on your teammate, then guess what? They’ll be eager to assist. Or if you want every girl there to tell a certain freshman with a poor diet to eat some vegetables or he’ll never graduate, then by all means, go ahead and do it. Becoming a fan favorite among the children opens the floodgates for fun, but be careful… Get too friendly and you’ll have kids jumping all over you on the mats; get too distant and you’ll end up alone in the arts and crafts room, bored out of your mind.

3. Master the phrase, “Ask that guy…”

Anyone who’s been around kids for more than five minutes knows that kids ask more questions than that Haverford student who clearly didn’t get into Swat and is boring the class with his triviality. This is why you must abandon any desire to answer any question that isn’t about where the bathroom is. I’m all for talking to the kids, but let’s be real, the fifth time some Eagles-jersey-wearing little punk asks me why I can’t dunk, I’m going to explode. Plus, I can’t explain that I’m just average athletically and I play 7.5 minutes a game because then I’ll end up alone in the arts and crafts room and be moved to last in the kickball order.

There’s a simple solution to all of this: “Ask that guy…” Direct them towards your least favorite teammate. It’s a golden opportunity to allow someone else to annoy them for you anyway. This goes for collecting the balls at the end also; do yourself a favor and when someone wants to know who’s doing it, throw an “Ask that guy…” at them and be on your merry way.

We all know that trying to pry a basketball from an overly anxious grade- school boy is a tornado of frustration located somewhere between Sharples during Ride the Tide and seeing Lady Gaga win a Grammy.

While implementing these strategies, never forget that the things that matter in the real world make absolutely zero difference during Kids’ Night Out. Even if you literally peed in your pants in the middle of Paces, these kids will have no clue and they’ll still love you, even if the Swattie you were grinding with doesn’t. Realistically, you can take a break from our hopelessly claustrophobic and incestuous institution for a couple of hours and create yourself as whoever you want to be. Their ignorance can be your bliss; it’s all a matter of how you manipulate it.

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