Elementary Schools Ban Popular Game ‘Tag’ to Comply With COVID-19 Standards

EDINA—In an effort to go above and beyond COVID-19 safety protocols, all Edina Elementary school administrations have banned students from playing the game ‘tag’ on playgrounds. Although this led to public outcry, Edina Public Schools continues to insist that they did this “for the kids.”
“Well, I understand that the schools just simply hate fun of any kind in their playgrounds. The same thing happened last year when they wouldn’t let us play our new game ‘hurt yourself’ and the year before that when they wouldn’t let us play ‘everyone gets into the tube slide until we all get stuck,’” Cornelia fourth grader John Schaplelen said. Many of his fellow students seemed to agree with him and his anti-establishment mentality.
To comply with the no-contact rules and still enjoy a playground staple game, students seem to have created a form of ‘cough tag,’ where the person who is ‘it’ is decided by whoever has the most saliva on their shirt by the end of recess. “I feel pretty gross most days after recess, and almost always feel sick since we started playing this game, but I suppose this is a safer alternative to touching each other. I can only imagine how sick we’d get if we were to go back to that,” Highlands third grader Monica Sayori said. Sayori also commented on the increase in students forced to go to an all-online module since their new game started and her confusion on the statistical anomaly.
To go above-and-beyond with COVID-19 standards in elementary schools, administrations are considering banning students from opening their eyes while at recess—if students can’t see each other, they can’t touch each other. Although injuries are predicted to skyrocket, many administrators believe that this would be further beneficial in helping to stop the spread.