Beach Capture the Flag

Date Dreamed: 2014-01-30

Dream

I’m in high school gym class and we’re trying to decide what game to play. The teacher is completely differing to me on this decision, and is being really obsequious in making sure that I’m happy with what is chosen. I decide on capture the flag, and then the teacher insists that I be one of the team captains. The picking isn’t shown, but I know that I end up with Ryan and Zach on my team. We turn around to find ourselves on a sandy beach and the other team captain (who I don’t recognize) has already set everything up to play. There are two ten foot poles set about 50 yards apart. Each pole has a pennant flag; my team is defending blue, and the other team is red. The objects we are capturing are colored bean bags with streamers attached. As the game starts, Ryan and I sprint to the other team's flag before they can defend it. The game plays similar to ultimate frisbee, so we are not allowed to run with the flags and defense consists of intercepting passes. I grab the red flag and Ryan is ready to receive it down the beach. In my classic skip the cutoff man move, I throw it over Ryan to Zach. My throw is short (I must have improperly judge the drag force of the streamer), but luckily the other team captain was guarding Ryan and Zach is able to retrieve the flag off the ground. We move the flag downfield back to our pole to score, and the rest of our team is able to keep Red from scoring with our flag. Our goalie (who might be A.J.) throws the blue flag into the far back corner of the field, because the beach somehow has a rectangular boundary expressed on it. The dream ends as I puzzle over the procedure for returning the red flag after we score.

Context Explanations

Ryan, Zach, and A.J. are kids I went to high school with. Ryan and A.J. (who was a soccer goalie) were both in my Outdoor Ed. class, which was a P.E. where we played various games outside. My rival captain seemed to be an amalgam of people I know, and the teacher was unrecognizable, which is strange because most of my gym teachers had pretty memorable personalities. I always skip the cutoff man in baseball.

Plot Holes

There isn’t really a good way to return the flag after a score. You can’t stop the game because the other flag is still in play, and forcing the team to run it back doesn’t really make sense. Without physical defense, there is also nothing stopping someone from standing at the pole to grab it as soon as it’s returned. This game is broken.

Erection?

Physically Yes

Analysis

I took a gym class every semester in high school, so a dream about this isn’t surprising. Capture the flag was always one of my favorite games as a kid, and I guess I was trying to create rules that would make sense for a gym class setting (and failed). Other than the fact that I show myself actively captain a winning team (they’re my dreams, so it's only seems natural that I’m the hero), the only analyzable part seems to be how the teacher was referring to me. What this resembles is when the gym teacher I always had in high school would direct math questions to me during class. He followed the school's math competition and would always bring up how well I did in front of the class. He was just a really cool guy like that. We had a good relationship; we used to talk about the benefits of cutting our own hair, once when I bloodied both knees and elbows in a sledding accident he complimented me on spreading the impact to four points of contact, and I would warn everyone not to bet against him performing amazing feats to make us run extra laps because he never failed (he used to sit in the bleachers at half court and swish basketballs one handed). He always tried to raise me up and make me feel good about myself, and that is the reason why I spent one eighth of my high school career in gym and don’t feel bad about it.

Auguries

Blue triumphed over red on the beach. I should wear my blue swim trunks next time I go swimming.