In which Our Hero proves he’s got rubber balls
Today I pissed off a clown.
It’s better to piss off a clown than to be pissed on by a clown.
We were playing 9-square. It’s like 4-square, but with 9 squares and more chaos.
I was playing legally. The rules say you can’t block another player, but you can wander outside your square. I was the King—the occupant of the center square—but I spent the whole game standing off to the side. Because: strategy.
The owner of that square complained.
The ref said my move was legal.
The owner complained again.
The ref asked me to move.
I moved.
Then I taunted the square’s owner.
The owner complained a third time.
The next ball that came to me…
I smacked it as hard as I could at her feet.
She was pissed. The crowd gasped. She appealed to the ref, who shrugged, as if to say: He played the game hard. What do you want me to do about it?
She stormed off. Later, I caught her venting to another player, confirmed later as badmouthing: “Can you believe that?”
Here’s what I learned:
- When I feel someone’s playing shenanigans, I get righteously pissed. When I get pissed, I get determined. And when I get determined, watch out.
- My classmates will now play differently with me.
- The fun-first crowd will avoid my wrath.
- The competitive ones will know I don’t back down.
- I may have just become the enforcer of clown school. Neither good nor bad—just a role.
It’s no coincidence that the person I clashed with was the second-best at the game. Competitive people find each other. And when they do, sparks fly.
I respect her. She plays hard. She got the ref on her side, a valid tactic. Later I overheard her admit she’d been feeling a bit touchy today. So maybe we both just hit the limit of our light play energy.
And she got me back. In the final round, she served me a tiny, dinky little ball: barely legal, perfectly placed. I was out. No one else noticed.
Well played. Respect.
(Though I’ve since heard others reacted to her venting with a kind of “Wait, what’s she mad about?” bemusement… so maybe the last laugh is still up for grabs.)
—
But what is this about, really?
Is this a story about clowning? About performance? About theater?
Maybe.
In a way, 9-Square is theater: it’s a miniature social hierarchy. The King in the middle. The peasants below. Everyone clawing their way upward by knocking someone else down. Game of Thrones played with rubber balls.
In singles, you play for survival and glory.
In doubles, it becomes a romance—your fate tied to your partner’s. You win not through aggression but through sync, trust, and conservatism.
It’s a lesson in status, alliance, and timing.
And like all good clown work, it’s about how you handle the fall.
—
As for my reputation: some classmates already dodge competing against me. Fair. For me, winning is part of fun, but the real goal is shared joy. I just happen to find joy in playing hard. Someone has to be clown game king: might as well be me.
Julian Wise 