I love playing competitive yard games, even though I’m not particularly good at them; being bad at them is part of the fun. Nobody likes to lose, but if you ever find yourself angry while holding a bean bag in one hand and a beer in another, it’s time to re-evaluate your life decisions.

Yard games (or lawn games as some people prefer) break out at all of my outdoor family gatherings whether spontaneous or planned.

The popular games of the moment have a funny way of coming in and out of fashion. Wiffle Ball was by far the most prevalent throughout my childhood, but as our teens turned to twenties and then thirties, it became decidedly less popular.

In recent years my family’s been more into KanJam – a frisbee targeting game where the biggest physical exertion is a simple flick of the wrist. I shudder to think what sort of games we’ll be playing in our fifties – probably something involving lots of blinking.

Our staple is bocce. As it’s just rolling balls toward a slightly smaller ball, it allows everyone to participate. I’ve seen toddlers topple seniors and seniors topple over, but everyone gets along.

Jenny’s family is big into oversized yard games. Her Aunt sent us a giant Yahtzee set that’s pretty fun, but by the time I fill out the whole card I’m exhausted. Picking up that many dice after three rolls each turn is just way too much effort for me.

I don’t even bend over to pick up sticks unless they’re big enough to damage the lawn mower. Next time I play, the rule is that you can only roll the dice into my waist-high John Deere yard cart and the loser has to spend five minutes picking up sticks.

I like playing ladder ball because the higher up you hit your target, the less far you have to bend over before your next turn. That’s the kind of risk/reward dynamic that keeps me playing all day.

Simplicity is key to a good yard game. Complicated games were the suburban rage in the late 1980s as volleyball nets and croquet courts started popping up in every yard. They were a hassle to set up and way too much work just to give myself volleyball-sized welts on my arms.

The best outdoor games I played as a kid didn’t have any equipment at all, like tag or Mother May I. Academics say these sort of games are good for building social skills, but the only purpose of Mother May I seemed to be for my older cousin to make us boys leap like ballerinas.

Those sort of games never embarrassed me because ridiculousness was built into the rules. I could roll with it. Simon Says, however, caused me extreme anxiety because you just kept playing until publicly demonstrating an inability to remember one simple rule. It was so humbling.

Then there are the games that just require one piece of equipment, usually a ball.

My brothers used to play a game called Bye Bye Baby where they would each hold a giant inflated ball and run into each other at full speed. Why was it called Bye Bye Baby? Because that’s what Lois Lane says before jumping into Niagara Falls in Superman II. Kids don’t always make sense.

I played a lot of games of butt ball during my pre-teen years. Butt ball is sort of like handball except that the winner of each round gets to throw a ball as hard as he can at the loser’s butt. There was nothing funnier to twelve-year-old Chris.

And that’s what really matters. The best thing about yard games is that you can’t play them alone. The enjoyment comes not from the game itself but from the interactions. Whether you’re swatting a badminton birdie or leaping through the air like a ballerina to make your cousin laugh, it’s the communal aspect that really brings the game to life.

Yard games prove that you can mix the ingredients of competition and camaraderie into a recipe of fun where everybody wins.

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