Best Man Falls

File under childhood memory department: When I was a kid growing up on 452 East Nugent Street in the city of my birth, Lancaster, California we had a game we played at El Dorado Park that was behind our house. The name of the game was Best Man Falls. I suppose I'm entering that time in my life where I'm recalling memories from 40 years ago but I can't remember what I did last weekend.

Best Man Falls was an army game. Now, many of you reading this may not have a concept of what the cold war was like, but having been indoctrinated with books like this we truly were young defenders of our free country ready to take up arms against the commie agressors.

But I digress - the game was simple. El Dorado Park had some gently rolling hills covered with nice soft grass. A defender was chosen and would take his place at the top of the hill and the rest of us would charge him. With his imaginary machine gun spitting lead as he sputtered the sounds, the defender would mow us down as his young limbs jerked from the imaginary recoil of that powerful weapon.

We would fall gruesomely, simulating as best we could torso separation, limb disembodiment, and other fatal wounds. We fell dramatically down the hill, reaching the bottom in a simulated state of death so final the Grim Reaper had no purchase on our young souls. Then, the defender would pick the "best man who fell" and that young lad would assume the defense position for another violent round of Best Man Falls.

I had the most eerie "deja vu" moment that excavated this thought as I watched the exact scenario from my childhood played out in a modern setting in this XBox promotional video.