So I’ve recently become very involved in and passionate about this new sport. It’s called Refond (emphasis on the first syllable). It was invented by my six-year-old daughter Beatrice. The object of the game is that Beatrice wins, no matter what.
To say that Beatrice has a competitive side is accurate only if she is also described as being shaped like a monogon. A monogon the size of the
Crisis points are reached whenever the tide of a particular game turns against my little one--you know, she’s just rounded the final bend in Candyland and draws the card that sends her back to the Peppermint Forest. In these times of crisis, it’s like having a three-foot Allan Dershowitz next to you. Last night, she argued with me fervently that because I rolled the die when it was her turn, she should be allowed to have the number that came up on the die. Nevermind that the roll brought her right back into contention in a game she was losing. That wasn’t the point. Indeed, the rolling of dice is always subject to legal scrutiny in Beatrice’s world: if the roll comes up unfavorably, you’d better hope it didn’t graze your elbow, because of course that means you got in the way and the roll didn’t count. It’s interference.
When she wins, she is insufferable. When she loses, she is inconsolable. In much the same way that she seems to believe that dessert is the only reason to eat a meal, she likewise believes that winning is the only reason to play a game. Losing is not just unacceptable, it is offensive. Losing causes her entire little world to fall in a shattered heap at her feet. And she is old enough to realize that she’s going to lose a lot, since she’s the youngest in the family and she has the least experience with the various games we play (having said this, she possesses one of the most devastating short-term memories I’ve ever come across and one plays Concentration with her at one’s own risk; my defeats at her hands have rarely been anything but humiliating).
The discovery of Refond has finally provided her with certain security in the world of familial competition. She invented it one Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago when she and I were home alone together.
There is nothing I would like more than to explain the rules to you, but it would be like trying to explain the shape of fog. Here’s what I can tell you: it involves a ball. The playing surface is the floor of our family room. I lean against one wall, in the midst of some oversized pillows and a bunch of stuffed bears who live in the pillows. Beatrice sits opposite me, about ten feet away, squeezed between the legs of one of our dining room chairs. We take turns rolling the ball back and forth across the floor. I think I’m meant to try to get the ball between the legs of the chair, which is of course impossible because the entire space between the legs is filled with child. What Beatrice is meant to do is a delightfully protean mystery. Oh, right--occasionally, at random moments, we shout, “Refond!” Well, I say random. Beatrice insists that there are clear reasons for saying it, and that whenever I say it, it’s always at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons. Which is fair enough.
In spite of my tone, I must state for the record here that I have had more fun playing Refond than I have ever had playing any other game or sport in my life. Honestly. The beauty of it is, you know that you can’t win, so you don’t really have anything at stake. And with such a plastic set of rules, it’s impossible to play well, so there’s no pressure there either. All that’s left is the opportunity to sit and watch the marvelously convoluted imagination of a six-year-old attempt to turn an ordinary setting and a largely unpredictable series of events into a comprehensible victory. Of some sort.
The flights of rationalization and defensive logic involved in this process are beyond absurd - they are outright hysterical. I have never laughed harder at anything in my life. I have laughed until I gasped, until my abdomen burned with the ache, until I cried. And my daughter, herself infected my hysterics, desperately tried to get control of my laughter in hopes that it would allow her to regain control of her game.
Tonight, for instance, when I said I wanted to play, I began by asking Beatrice to confirm for me the fact that no one but her was allowed to win. This she would not do. I can understand this - without the bitter possibility of losing, winning tastes far less sweet. But I pressed this point, because I have always understood it as central to the game, and I wanted to have my understanding confirmed by the game’s creator and mistress. What I failed to appreciate, however, was that attempting to fix this rule in stone broke the second rule of the game: no Refond rule will ever be fixed in stone.
“You can win if you put the ball in the goal [between the legs of the chair].”
“So I just have to do that once, and then I win?”
“No, if you do that, you get a point.”
“How many points do I need to win?”
“225.”
I laughed here, at both her precision and her excess. I couldn’t help myself. She laughed too. I said, “We can’t play until I score 225 goals.”
“Okay, then, we’ll play to 20.”
“That’s still too much.”
“Okay, then, you can get 10 points for a goal.”
“So I only have to score two goals, and then I can win?”
“Yes,” she replied and promptly filled every square inch of the “goal” with her tiny body.
“Right, so like I said, I can’t win, because there is no way I can get this ball into your goal if you’re going to park yourself in front of it like that.”
“But you have two goals you can use.” This sentence delivered with the authoritative air of the experienced professional reading to the young neophyte from the international rulebook.
“Ah. What’s the other one?”
“The other chair.” She points to another, slightly larger chair, about two feet away from the one she’s gripping.
“Okay, so if I score twice in either of these goals, I win?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” With this clarification of play, I prepare to roll the ball into the unprotected goal. Sensing this, my daughter shrieks and throws her body flat and outstretched on the floor, such that her arms and head block one chair while her legs block the other.
After a few more minutes’ negotiation, we resume play and I manage to score a goal. “Yes! Ten points!” I yell, the smell of victory finally wafting in my direction. I make a bit of a show here, whooping it up and bragging of my accomplishment to my other daughter, seated nearby. Beatrice, meanwhile, insists that I’ve only earned two points. I shout back that she said the goal was worth ten. Our debate escalates, and she senses that my superior volume could win the day. So, when I am momentarily distracted by her sister, Beatrice kicks the ball wildly. It bounces off the coffee table and hits me on the foot.
This move was apparently precisely what she was going for, as evidenced by her reaction: “HAH! YES!! GOAL! 5000 points! BOO-YAH!!!”
Game play is paused here as the phrase “boo-yah” coming out of the face of my child has reduced me, once again, to a giggling mess. The girls follow suit. When, minutes later, Beatrice is finally able to draw enough oxygen into her lungs to speak, she explains (rather haughtily, in my opinion) that if the ball ever hits a player after it bounces off of something, the player who throws it gets 5,000 points.
Again, fair enough. I have no one to blame for my ignorance but myself, after all.
One of my favorite aspects of Refond is that, unlike conventional sport, it does not have a clear endpoint. There are no banal markers like “innings” or “quarters” or “periods” or the like. Instead, each Refond event contents itself with a slow disintegration under the weight of its own complexity. At some point, my attempt to reconcile the various rules that Beatrice has constructed, along with her attempt to keep track of her own contradictions and reversals, will leave us both prone on the floor, psychicly shattered. Sometimes gameplay will be halted by a bathroom break, which walk might itself occasion a glimpse of some distraction more enticing than Refond: mom making lunch or sister fiddling around at some website. Every so often, as different props are introduced as Refond equipment, the props themselves lead the players into other recreation.
In all these instances, the promise of continuing the game remains in the air as heavy as the reality of the game’s conclusion. Some element of Refond, then, permeates all our daily activities; the game goes on for Beatrice even when it isn’t Refond season.
So, now we also play Refond Race to the Top of the School Steps (“You weren’t holding the rail the whole way up! I win!”) and Refond Clear the Breakfast Dishes Best (“Yours didn’t count because you pushed in my chair and I was supposed to do that. I win!”)
Someday, I hope to compile a rulebook for Refond - one that real sports geeks will pore over and memorize in order to engage in legalistic debates with one another, like they do about the designated hitter rule in baseball and the offside rule in European football. I’d love for there to be a National Refond League: a whole bunch of people who get together and compete in the sport and know that, no matter what happens in the end, Beatrice wins.
Even if she isn’t there.
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