Let’s say the year is 2010, and you’ve just started your first day at Clear Spring School. “Wow,” would probably be your first thought, “this school is really tiny.” Then, “Huh,” you’d think, “These other students are all a bunch of dorks.” And finally, come lunchtime recess, you’d think, “What the heck is this game that literally the entire school is playing?” (Well, you’d probably think this after first coming to terms with the idea that high schoolers get an hour-long lunchtime recess at all, and sometimes for longer.)
Four students, ranging from elementary to high schoolers, plus a certain high school teacher, stand on a court, passing, smacking, kicking, or punching a ball back and forth while dozens of others are lined up awaiting their turns. A great variety of emotions are exhibited. There is laughter and cheering, yelling and crying. Some friendships are made, others are tested. Rivalries emerge. There is flirting. You do not want to play the game at first. But eventually, you will, and you will love it.
The game is called Four Square, and it is the best playground game ever invented. The court consists of four squares about ten feet to a side (Fig. 1). There are four players at any one time, one to a square. The player in the “King Square” (the King) serves a ball by bouncing it from their square to another player’s square. After it bounces, the other player must hit the ball into another square without holding it, letting it bounce again, hitting it onto a line, or hitting it entirely out of the court. If a player goes “out,” they go to the back of the line, and players from lower squares move up to fill the vacancy.
You quickly find that this game is more complicated than it looks. As a first-time four square player, you still need to develop the reflexes, muscle memory, and intuition to keep up with the veterans. You cannot see the ball’s trajectory and jump to the optimal location to pass it on when Tyler brutally slams the ball into your square or swivels to the proper angle to save a particularly tricky pass from eight-year-old Oakley, who is way too young to be that good.
You cannot know when Hendrik will take his callused piano man fist and launch the ball so hard into your square that it flies off into the woods and pops on a honey locust thorn. But you will learn. Because this game is fun, it’s fun when you get revenge on Hendrik by tapping the ball so softly into his square that its bounce is too small to see, or you eke out a Hail Mary save into Joah’s corner from outside the court and get him out, or you turn a fast-moving ball into a nice slow-moving one for your crush. This game is like life itself.
The only thing that could be called a goal in Four Square is to reach King Square and remain there for as long as possible. During my three years at Clear Spring, I only managed to remain King for an entire recess once. People dislike it when a head of state stays put too long. Assassination is common. Despite such challenges, you quickly develop the skillset necessary for maximizing your time as King. This includes such tactics as:
- Using other body parts to hit the ball, including your feet, head, or bottom.
- Punching the ball directly at someone’s face to get them out.
- Developing a “special move” with a specific call-out, like you’re from Dragonball Z. Mine was called “Mr. Swirly.” It consisted of me spinning around the ball as it bounced and flinging it into a random square, super effectively.
- Serving the ball into the Peasant Square so low and fast that no one can play the game.
- Forming a coalition to take down whatever tyrant is doing that, usually one of the high school boys, including Hendrik, Thomas, Bradley, Ryan, Luke, or Lucas.
Four Square accelerates your acclimation to Clear Spring. Now, you have something to discuss with the other students when you come in after recess with mud all over your stinging palms. You quickly learn their personalities just from watching them play.
My sister Rachel, who likes to stay above classroom drama, avoids using her hands at all costs. AnnaMarie, on the other hand, who rules the school, is directly hit by the ball more than everyone else combined. Jack, the only student who wears cowboy boots, moves with a John Waynian economy until it comes time to strike with pinpoint accuracy. Then there’s Pete, the high school teacher, who, in his wisdom, remains unknowable to mere mortals. Pete invents a new hat trick with every play and only goes out when he wishes to. He is four Square’s Gandalf the Golden, both deus ex machina and deus itself, harsh yet fair.
Because Clear Spring is weird, its rules and other idiosyncrasies develop over time. The Knight Square is called the Magical Fairy Princess Square at Clear Spring. Because of the preponderance of young players, bouncing the ball over someone’s head is an automatic out. Hitting the well-pump cover, about twenty feet from the court, with the ball results in an automatic kingship.
At some point, the volume of students in the line so far exceeds the four permitted on the court, and the court is extended to nine squares by Tyler’s dad. With new angles of attack, suddenly, you have to relearn your tactics and strategies. The journey to King has never seemed so long. Making things even more difficult is the fact that the sixth square now has an entire tree growing out of it, and hitting the tree with the ball is an automatic out. Yet soon, you dominate the nine squares as you once did four. You have grown since you came here. You have changed.
Then, one day, you leave Clear Spring. Perhaps you graduate, or move to another school, or get kicked out for being caught smoking pot behind one of the buildings. Wherever you go, no one there likes to play Four-Square. “It’s a kids’ game,” they say, “I haven’t played that since I was five.” But you know better.
Years later, when you’re in college, and you go to your suitemate’s dad’s man-cave out in the countryside for the weekend to have a good old time with the boys, you have a hankering, and you draw a four square court in his dad’s garage with a permanent marker, and you teach your college friends to play. At first, they’re skeptical. Then it’s three in the morning, and you’re still playing. One of your friends fractures his wrist, hitting the ball with too much enthusiasm.
Then, you finish college and start grad school in another state across the country. Years pass, and you grow increasingly disconnected from reality because most of your time is spent thinking about frogs. You fly home for Thanksgiving because if you go any longer without your mom’s chocolate bourbon pecan pie, you’ll die.
There happens to be a rubber ball in the garage and four roughly equal-sized slabs of concrete making up the driveway. Your sisters are there, and so is your cousin, who was born in 2015, which should be illegal. You miss being a kid. You miss being at Clear Spring. You know what to do.
Miracle in the Woods, a captivating anthology of stories and essays penned by current and former students, parents, and staff, celebrates the spirit and memories of Clear Spring School, which is turning 50 in October. Available in September 2024, your purchase will contribute directly to the school’s fundraising efforts. For more information, call (479) 253-7888.