Extreme sports fanatics may flip over this, but so-called "lame games" like Wiffle ball, kickball, dodgeball and even jump rope are getting a renewed workout from adults looking for simple, recreational fun.

Growing up, I thought such games were the exclusive domain of elementary school. We played kickball and dodgeball.

On the playground, we pounded the tether ball. The boys engaged in free-for-all soccer games that proved to be all out kicking assaults.

Now, our school-day games are making a comeback with the old-enough-to-know better set.

Angus Durocher of San Francisco started a kickball league of primarily dot.com workers nearly two years ago. Kickball, he says, was "something fun and stupid to do." I'm all for "fun and stupid" unless it's something that my children really shouldn't do. "Fun and stupid" only goes so far unless it's on television.

Television is 75 years old this year, but it didn't make it to the dinner table until well into the last century.

I grew up in St. Louis County in the 1960s. Our family had a single, black and white television set with a rabbit-ears antenna. Televised sports were a weekend affair. Cable television didn't exist. We survived on a handful of over-the-air channels and frequent trips to the library.

Cable has changed all that. Today, we have a ton of channels.

There are channels devoted to everything from soap operas to westerns. Others are devoted entirely to news or sports.

When I was a kid, TV news was strictly an evening affair. If we wanted daytime news, we read the newspaper.

Today, Americans have television in almost every room in the house. We switch it on almost without thinking.

It keeps us entertained without us even having to play kickball or come up with our own jokes.

Big TVs have replaced big cars as status symbols. Ben Franklin would have understood. Americans have always loved gadgets and television is the biggest gadget of all.

It's become a member of our families. It has spanned continents and helped turn our world into a global village.

It's been nearly a year since we watched in horror as the World Trade Center towers collapsed after being struck by terrorist-hijacked airliners. We witnessed the devastation on television and felt we were lost in the rubble.

For my daughters, Becca and Bailey, television is entertainment. It provides entire channels devoted to cartoons and sitcoms from the younger point of view that regularly compete with my effort to watch Cardinal baseball on the living room TV.

A whole generation grew up with TV's Barney the dinosaur.

But like a relative who has overstayed his welcome, Barney is no longer welcome in our home. We've moved on to the "Wiggles," a show with four goofy guys from Australia that Bailey, our first grader, loves to watch as she's getting ready for school each morning. These guys would be perfect at lame games.

Of course, TV isn't our only entertainment. We have our puppy, Cassie, to keep us hopping in the morning as she runs around trying to bite our toes.

It's not dodgeball, but it keeps us from being too glued to the TV set.

We wouldn't want that. There's still a place for the printed word. It's why spelling, thankfully, is still taught in school.

That way we'll know how to spell Wiffle ball even if we never try to hit the plastic ball.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.