I was reading a Kiwanis magazine from a month ago because of the title on the front cover. The cover had, “The Power of Play” and I had glanced at it before but never took much time to really read all the articles. I looked up the definition of play in the American Heritage dictionary to see how it is described. Most words have a few sentences and maybe several definitions. Play has over 14 definitions, and many of those have up to 10 different versions of how the word play can be used. The definition took up most of one column and part of a second column.
A person can play a game, a musical instrument, cards, baseball, football, golf, and a host of other sports. About the only one that did not fit the play definitions was bowling. I never heard anyone ask, “Do you want to play a game of bowling?” You can “go bowling,” “play on our bowling team,” but never “play bowling.” Another one might be archery. You, “shoot archery,” but it is hard to find an enthusiast that wants to “play archery.” You can play, “cowboys and Indians,” and have archery be part of the game, but it is still not quite “play archery.”
I have a shirt that I wore when I taught activities that read, “You do not quit playing because you get old, you get old because you quit playing.” Race directors know this is true because years ago the upper age category was 40 years and over. Now the minimum upper age for most races is 70 years and over, and a few races that have categories that round off at 90 years and over. It seems that more men fill those upper age categories with the exception in the age category of 40 years and 50 years. There are usually more women than men in those age group categories in the race entries.
