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The Grand Contest

by Romanirob

Chapter 3: Recruiting New Blood.

We had our meeting room and play area. It was called “The Dojo”.  It had a floor covered in soft mats, so we could muck about on it. But we really needed some new members if we were to have a decent Tugs team.

Michael and I demonstrated the “Chinese Chain” and “Straight jacket” ties. They look good and are hard to escape from. Many of the boys became interested.

Chopper approached me with a rope in his hand. “Can I tie you up, Sprog?” he asked.

“All right,” I agreed. He trussed my wrists together behind my back expertly. He gestured, and I went down on my knees and then lay on my stomach so he could tie my ankles together.

I had to admit he was pretty efficient. He kneeled beside me and whispered in my ear, “We have to trust each other sometime.” If he was going to get even with me, now was the time, but he didn’t try anything. He sat cross legged on the floor, looking at me.

“I trust you, Ed,” I said. I deliberately used his first name – a gesture of familiarity that schoolboy culture did not usually allow between boys. “In fact, I’ll let you be my partner. You can be the one who ties me. Michael will help. He knows a lot of stuff.”
I sensed he was lonely. That was why he bullied other boys. He was seeking their attention. He didn’t want them to hate him. He really wanted them to like him. He was just going about it in the wrong way.
We told him about Tugs and the National Contest. He said his parents would probably let him go, so we included him in our team.

Our school had fine sporting ovals, and were a venue for teams from clubs in the town. Sometimes, visiting students playing cricket, basketball, or other sports would be invited to look around our grounds.
Naturally, there was some interest in our Dojo. It had an excellent judo mat, and when we were asked if the local Judo club could use it, we said we had no objections.

It didn’t take the visitors long to find out about our specialized martial arts, Hojojutsu. We practised on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, between four and six in the afternoons, so it wasn’t difficult to allow some of the ‘townies’ to join us.

At last, I thought, we had enough members to create a proper Tugs team. In a creeping assault on the restrictive rules that had been imposed on us, we first attacked the Hojojutsu tag and nicknamed the activity: ‘Tugs’. This was much more favoured than the Japanese term. Changing the name meant we didn’t have to follow all the traditional ceremonials and forms.

Peter tried to keep us ‘on track’ but found he had an uphill battle. For instance, in traditional Hojojutso, one does not use knots, but rather uses loops in the ropes. We decided that, in our form, it would be okay to use knots. We weren’t supposed to wear our ‘uniforms’ around the school because jeans weren’t permitted, but we wore that rule down gradually.

I was still able to visit Gordon during visits to town, and soon had four pairs of handcuffs. We kept them in a locked drawer in the dojo. On weekends when we didn’t have town leave, we had ‘bush leave’ on Sundays after chapel and were able to take hikes into the surrounding bush land. There, we could play all sorts of tie-up games.
We wore casual polo shirts and shorts, but always carried our blues and ropes in our backpacks.

This allowed us to be more creative in our ties. One of my favourites was to sit down, with ankles sheer lashed and the knees drawn up towards the chest. My sheer lashed hands were pulled down over my knees, and tied to my ankles. Then a stick or bar would be pulled through just in the crook of the knees. That tie has a name, ‘The Parrot’s Perch’ because the Nazis used it in WWII as a torture, but they used to hang their prisoners from the bar upside down. It was done properly. I couldn’t move much so I just had to sit there until I was released.

When we played tugs in the bush, somebody always had to stand watch to make sure we were safe. That was one thing we had discovered after Daniel’s accident. Nobody wanted to feed the crows again.

We had the idea of inviting the town boys to meet us so we could play wide games. This involved a game called ‘Poachers’, where we would be the game, and they would be the hunters. We’d have to hide, and they would hunt us down. If they caught us, they could tie us up. We had a wooded area that was safe, and one boy was the guard who could make sure we were okay. After two hours, we would swap sides. We’d be the hunters, and they’d be the prey.

Only town boys who were in the Hojojutsu club could play. We didn’t want to be mobbed by town bullies, and we wanted people we could trust, who knew the rules and would play safely. I could just imagine the local junior arsonist setting the bush alight while we were all trussed up to trees, or a local thug having a field day bashing us for a bit of fun.

We didn’t just do tugs. There were all sorts of things to do in the bush, and we had a pretty good time. The school gave us sandwiches and fruit for lunch, with cordial in plastic bottles, but the townies brought sausages, steaks, barbecue rolls, and an iron griddle, so we could have a decent barbecue.

We were hiding in a gully when Tony spotted us. The chase was on. I headed for a patch of turkey bush, while Steven tried to hide in the gully. They jumped him, and he was caught. I got away, but managed to see what they were doing to Steven.

Mark secured his hands with two half hitches in front, while a thick stick was pushed through the elbows behind him. It was a version of the Chinese Chain. He wasn’t going anywhere. He had to sit down with his legs on each side of a thin sapling. His ankles were sheer-lashed together and the rope stretched to another tree. Even if he got his hands free, he wouldn’t be able to reach his ankles to free his feet.
I thought it was a very clever tie. The townies caught me, and I spent half an hour tied to a tree.
We played until four o’clock, when we had to return to school. Everyone was released, and we finished the barbecue. And promised to meet them the following weekend at the same place and time.

That night, at school, we had pizza. Chopper had brought some rope into the dormitory, and we played tugs in the common room. He managed to get a couple of the younger smurfs interested, in it, but Haines, the house prefect, busted us and told us firmly to keep our roping activities in the dojo. As the grade eight kids were volunteers, he couldn’t put us on report for bullying. It was a close shave, but Froggy and Gusto decided they wanted to join us, so we had two more members.

© 2009 by Romanirob

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