The History and Meaning of Zorkball

by Sean Carman

Every day at Laramie High School there were vacant hours we had no choice but to endure. High school is not prison, but it is true that for long periods they give you nothing to do and you cannot leave the grounds. Nothing challenges the imagination like regularly scheduled stretches of empty time. Our school year had approximately 160 days. That's 160 lunch periods, each 35 minutes long, although it took only 10 minutes to navigate the line and finish each day's offering. When the weather was nice we took to spending our free lunch time walking the perimeter. Behind the school building a gently sloping curb abutted a small patch of grass. In the middle of this patch of grass there was a No Parking sign fastened to a hollow steel pole. The sign kept the area in the immediate vicinity free of traffic, making it possible for us to invent the game of zorkball.

Zorkball was an improvement over sitting in the lunch room. We played it with an aluminum soda can crushed into the shape of a disk, like a light aluminum hockey puck. We formed two teams of two players each. The object of the game was to throw or kick the zork (the crushed can) against the metal sign. We placed a garden hose in a three-meter circle around the sign. Inside this area you could not touch the zork with your hands. We called this the "HEZ," which stood for either the "Hose-Enclosed Zone" or the "Hand Exclusion Zone," I can't recall which. Whatever the name signified, the HEZ made scoring sufficiently difficult to lend interest to the game.

Although I'm not sure, I believe zorkball's name came from one of our grade school English teachers. I have no memory of her apart from the assignments she gave and the fears she inspired. I remember, for example, her strict insistence that we learn to spell phrases that I can report never having used in my adult life. Phrases that, if you were desperate, you would work into cocktail party conversations to impress people you didn't like. In my memory she has fiery eyes and wild curls that snake around her head. To us the crushed can was a symbol of our treatment in her class, and our invented sport a weapon to wield against everyone who didn't understand us. Greatness, we knew, often arises from such small, some might venture to say petty, beginnings.

Each game began with one team taking possession of the zork some distance from the post and beginning their attempt to score. During play the defending team could do almost anything to keep the zork from touching the signpost, but if ever a player caused the zork to go out of bounds, one of the members of the opposing team would be allowed to kick the zork from the curb back into the field of play. We called such a kick a "chip zork," and the opposition had to let a chip zork sail freely through the air. When a score was tallied, play resumed with the opposing team taking possession of the zork. Play ran, with no stoppage, for 20 minutes.

The rare instance when a player scored off a kick from the curb -- a successful chip zork, in other words -- represented a uniquely beautiful element of the game. A crushed aluminum can actually possesses rudimentary aerodynamic properties, it has some loft in other words, and occasionally one of us would kick the zork in a perfect arc, striking the metal post or sign with a metallic clang that still rings in my memory. No one ever suggested awarding more than the traditional one point for a successful chip zork. Its rare but reliable occurrence, and the satisfying chime it produced, were reward enough. One could imagine that sound igniting stadium crowds.

Most points, however, began with the zork landing somewhere far from the sign and perhaps rolling a short distance on its side before lodging hopelessly in the dirt or grass. Sometimes a chipzork dribbled forth pathetically from the curb, traveling only a few feet before coming to rest. Aluminum cans, unfortunately, make lifeless sporting objects. After each point, a frenzy of passes, throws and kicks ensued, until one team or the other managed to cause the zork to contact the post. Blocking the sign while holding onto it with one hand became a favored strategy, and often during lunch hour it looked as if the No Parking sign behind the school marked the center of a rugby scrum.

There were seven of us. We were all in the marching band, and we belonged to the Chess Club, which we formed without filling out the appropriate forms to ensure that there would be at least one unauthorized student organization at our school. We conceived of the Chess Club as a front for radical student activities like putting up unauthorized homecoming posters and sneaking facetious bulletins in front of the secretary who read the morning announcements over the intercom. Once we were called in to explain the apparent insensitivity of an announcement that Anatoly Karpov and Boris Spassky (who, apparently unbenownst to school office personnel, were not in fact students but international chess grandmasters) had been cut from Chess Club and were hence free to join Soccer Club. We considered ourselves normal.

Typically Matt, Manus, Taylor and I played zorkball. Dan, Jamie and Jim Zook occasionally took part. Dan always wore hiking boots, which gave him a decided advantage, bruised our shins and made us slightly resentful. We were in love with Jim Zook's last name, and called him "Zook-Bob" or simply "The Zook." He was taller than the rest of us, and his name made him a legend.

I don't have to tell you that zorkball never caught on. It's a hard game to understand. Most of the action occurs in close quarters and is visible only to the contestants. I imagine that, if it ever became a popular professional sport, zorkball would be played in large stadiums before confused, milling crowds. I picture a scene out of a Monty Python skit: Four players clustered around a metal pole, in the center of a crowded stadium, a referee nervously fidgeting about with a red flag on a stick, tentatively raising it once or twice, never sure whether to call a foul or let play continue.

Other students probably saw it in the same way. We once asked the cheerleading squad to perform as we played (after all, they also had nothing to do, or so we thought; well, whatever they were doing didn't involve us), but they declined. We endured hostile stares from the students who happened to wander back behind the school during lunch.

The seven of us eventually graduated, went on variously to college, graduate school, the armed services or the working world. Like everyone else I went about trying to make the world better, never really giving zorkball a second thought. Had I thought about it, I would have assumed zorkball had taken its place among so many other creations of men that begin as grand blueprints but end up as small stones that cast only a brief ripple before sinking without notice.

In fact Manus was nursing the legend of the game, such as it is. Much like his Irish progenitors, who modestly saved the Western liberal tradition by storing it safely in their basements for a few years, never bragging about their miraculous feat, Manus has kept the memory of zorkball alive by entering it in contests and promoting it to emerging cable sports networks. Recently I received word that his efforts might have paid off. Taylor forwarded me an e-mail from Manus trumpeting an inquiry from the Disney Corporation about promoting zorkball on its cable channel. I was amazed. I read the e-mail several times, and each time the world changed its aspect, seeming suddenly like a stunning woman at a party who had inexplicably turned around to include me in her conversation. The Disney Channel, I thought. Cable, I eventually concluded, must have created such a powerful vacuum in television programming that even our childhood creations had become suitable material. Owing to a fortunate turn of events, one of those creations stood ready to be sucked into cable television's vast airless expanse. I was elated.

Manus' news occasioned a sort of electronic reunion. Manus, Matt Taylor and I traded e- mails for a day and a half, daydreaming about the millions we would finally collect. The fickle compass needle of fame appeared poised to jump in our direction. My euphoria lasted until the next day, when Manus forwarded the e-mail he'd received from the Disney producer. It was, you could say, pitched below our level. It congratulated Manus, said he would need his parents' permission to answer the e-mail, and cautioned that they would have to escort him onto the show. With this, my dream of a hefty stock portfolio dissipated into the recycled air in my office. I went back to thinking about my work.

Still, zorkball deserves more than five minutes on some children's cable show incapable of doing justice to its sacred origins and rich meaning. Despite its flaws, it is a sport for the ages. It not only combines soccer, rugby, basketball, lacrosse and that weird ancient Mayan ball game, it shares an element of greatness with them: The universal appeal of an organized frenzy that produces a defining moment, in this case the graceful flight of a crumpled disk that ends in the light chime of aluminum against hollow steel. A successful chip zork produces a moment with the power to drive roaring stadium crowds to their feet. That is why I remain convinced, despite our recent disappointment, that somewhere, someone owes us something for the invention of zorkball. Something big.

THE END