Imagine this. It's 2086. An earnest young graduate student in anthropology turns on his camera, and turns to the stooped, white-haired gentleman sitting across from him.

"Tell me more about this game 'tag' -- how was it played exactly?"

Like one of the last speakers of some obscure tribal language, the old man is a living relic of a dead culture. This one was wiped out by lawyers and those who fear them, well-meaning principals and teachers, insurance companies, anxious and ambitious parents, and school reformers with no patience for playtime.

Dodgeball has been under assault for years. This past school year, my son's elementary school principal banned tag and all its variations from recess, on the grounds it encourages aggressive behavior. And I just saw a USA Today story indicating that she is part of a national movement, with games like tag, socccer, and touch football being banned at schools across the country.

Thankfully, there's been an outcry from some in the educational community, who argue that these kinds of games, organized by kids themselves, are part of how kids learn to get along with each other, work together, and deal with losing and sometimes getting hurt. Active play at recess is also important for fighting off childhood obesity.

I agree with those arguments, but I'd like to add another: playground games are a big part of kids' culture, that little space they find for themselves out of sight of the confines of the grown-up culture that rules their days.

Tag. Sardines. Beckons. Kick the can. Freeze tag. Capture the flag. Dodgeball. Crack the whip...Just some of the ways that kids, left more or less to their own devices, have come up with through the generations to find out who can run fastest, throw hardest, take a joke, skin their knee without crying, lose gracefully. Who's tough, who's trustworthy, who peaks through their fingers and who doesn't really count all the way to 100.

You don't learn those lessons without the occasional trip to the emergency room, bloody nose, or rude awakening. But think how scary it would be to arrive at adulthood without ever having learned them.