House Rules

I went for an orientation last night to volunteer as a referee for a boccee tournament at the Senior’s Games next weekend. I have played campground boccee many times and discovered that we always play with house rules or “my house my rules”. We have added and subtracted from the list as the kids and grandkids became more proficient. We created a ‘golden ball’ option that meant that for that end all points were doubled. This was meant to give the younger ones a chance to catch up. The official rules of boccee don’t mention golden ball.

How many house rules have you created to adapt to circumstances and participants? Are they still needed? Valuable? Working?

When was the last time you examined a rule and said “what is this supposed to achieve?” Is it time to toss out some house rules and make some new ones? We can all get moving down a path and forget to look around and see if we are still going in the right direction. We can become blind to the unexpected because it doesn’t conform to what we always see.

I was thinking about rules this morning when I was out running a very familiar route and was awakened when a coyote was trotting down the path in front of me. ” I haven’t seen that for a long time” went through my head. Since coyotes are territorial and habitual, he was always in the vicinity but I wasn’t looking where he was walking or maybe I just didn’t have my eyes open to the possibility of him.

Make Today Remarkable, by changing a rule,