State bureaucrats have identified a potentially deadly hazard facing our children this summer – freeze tag.

That’s right, officials have decided the age-old street game – along with Wiffle Ball, kickball and dodgeball – poses a “significant risk of injury.”

And classics like Capture the Flag, Steal the Bacon and Red Rover are also deemed dangerous in new state regulations for day camps.

– Glenn Blain, N.Y. Daily News.

Hold on: Wiffle Ball? How can Wiffle Ball be deemed dangerous? Even if you were using Wiffle equipment as weapons it’s still hard to figure how you could actually hurt someone. I’ve been hit hard with a Wiffle bat on multiple occasions and I can’t remember even seeing a bruise. The hole in the bat’s knob does make it a perfect device for launching bottle rockets, but, you know, the object is to keep bottle rockets out of kids’ hands, not Wiffle bats.

Plus it’s difficult to determine why the sports the state deemed safe — Frisbee, sack races and tug of war — are any less dangerous than the inherently disappointing Steal the Bacon. You can easily fall on your face in a sack race and get rope burn in tug of war.

When I was young, we played with fire. Like, a lot. Don’t do that at home, it was remarkably dumb. One time my neighbor and I got caught dipping the tips of our Nerf bow-and-arrows in lighter fluid and igniting them so we could play Robin Hood. Another time we doused a dead basketball in lighter fluid, lit it up and played flaming soccer. Best part of that was that the air inside the ball expanded from the heat, so once the flames went out it was a good basketball again for like 20 minutes. But point is I’m sure our parents would have much, much preferred us playing Red Rover.

Also, I know there are places that ban dodgeball because it’s humiliating, and it can definitely be that. But the way I see it, pretty much every single human from ages 11 to 16 is going to face a good deal of humiliation and general miserableness. It’s kind of how you grow up. I certainly wasn’t the most physically gifted dodgeballer in my class, but learning that taught me to play dodgeball smarter, and once I did, dodgeball became really fun. We risk plenty of humiliation in adult life too, and to me it seems like we prepare to deal with it by enduring the universal awfulness of middle school.

Link via James K.