Anyone for (sport of your choice)?

I'm a regular runner. Not as regular as Grandpa on metamucil, but I normally get out for a run five times a week (and you better hope Grandpa is more regular than that). I don't really compete any more (if you can even call what I did in high school 'competing'), but I run often enough and have enough of a competitive mentality about it to think of running as a sport. Makes sense, because running is a sport, and you won't find many people who disagree with that, although you may find some who view it just as exercising (someplace in the same realm as dancersize).

Athletes of a similar caliber

You won't, however, find anyone who would say that running is a game. Things like golf, or shuffleboard, those are games (Grandpa is regular on the shuffleboard court - take that how you will!). But not running.  Now, to me, these are clear distinctions. Rarely do you get activities that really cross boundaries. I ride a high horse, though. I've always thought of running as the most pure of sports, and I'll admit that I look at most sports and think "Sure, it's cool, but it's not running."

This brings me to the point of this post. Yesterday , while trotting down riverside park, I was confronted by one of the all too real dangers of living in New York City (without a trusty stunt double to face the dangers! I've been sorting through applications for this thankless position and have been unable to settle on a candidate). Now, I'd like to show you what you would have seen if you had been with me on that run, but I can't. You'll have to settle for what a camera operated by someone who doesn't know what he's doing with it (i.e. me) recorded.

Adults (?) participating in the sport (?) of kickball!

So I've determined that I've probably fallen victim to one, perhaps two, of these dangers of New York City.

1) An inability to distinguish what is and is not a sport.

2) An inability to distinguish what is and is not a grown up.

Both of these are caused by living in New York. Let's be honest, there's a space crunch. I remember one time a friend and I made a "sport" in high school that involved trying to get a bouncy ball to bounce on every step of a stoop. But is that an excuse for thinking kickball is a sport? If anything, these people should be kicked off so that area can be used for a real sport, like shuffleboard. Shoot, I've been in this city for too long.

The other option is that I simply didn't know that these people were in second grade. This is also an issue exacerbated by living in New York. Maybe young people are just looking older and older. This isn't a surprise to anyone who loves Miley Cyrus. Honestly, I think this problem is more severe in New York City because so many of those young'uns are so darn fashionable (I say this in the same way that a midget says other people are tall). I'm not judging, but darn it, how do you tell the 22 year old sluts from the 16 year old ones?

Let's just hope that these two dangers never get combined into a sport/game/exercise in which you need to guess if dating someone would end up with you in prison - I'd be horrible at that.