In the wake of tag and dodgeball’s disappearance from playgrounds across the country, foursquare has come under attack. Yesterday, the school board of small town Kitsuck, Mo., announced a blanket ban of the popular schoolyard game and all related paraphernalia.
    “This ban isn’t an attempt to curtail bullying or unfairness. In fact, foursquare promotes cooperation and a friendly atmosphere on the blacktop,” said Millard White, Kitsuck’s school board superintendent. Rather, the board views the game as furthering the respective agendas of the square and four lobbies.
    “With so much emphasis being place on the number four — four sides, four right angles, four players — one has to wonder what happened to three and five,” White said. He added that such focus is hardly proportionate with four’s actual place in America. “Our system is base 10, we have five fingers on each hand, and marriage is between one man and one woman. Obviously, four is almost non-existent in the real world,” White said.
    According to the board, the prevalence of squares in such a game prevents educational progress. “Look at it this way. Kids are thinking creatively in class, coloring with crayons they’ve never used before, learning words that may or may not be altogether appropriate, and what happens when they get let out for recess? They start thinking inside the box, literally and therefore figuratively. They forget the ideals of keeping an open mind and challenging widely accepted truth, and simply try to hit a ball within the parameters dictated by their superiors,” said Julianne Travers, a school board and ACLU member.
    White expanded on the evils of abundant squares. “What about triangles? Circles? The elusive rhombus?”
    The decision has received unanimously negative reactions from the Kitsuck community. “If my boy Ricky wants to play with them foursquares, Ricky gonna play with them foursquares. That little Travers girl best look out if my boy ain’t done get his game back,” said Kerby Jackson, a Kitsuck resident.
    Residents have also raised the legality of such a ban into question. “The right to play foursquare is inherently guaranteed to our children by the United States Constitution and the statutes of the state of Missuouri,” said John Khitzruel, a concerned parent.
    School Board Bans Foursquare Khitzruel v. Kitsuck Board of Education is slated to be heard by Missouri’s Supreme Court by next July.