Being from a large family, we are close to each other and try to get together as often as possible. Over the years it seems that busy schedules and obligations cut into the amount of time we can spend together. When we do get together we play backyard football. This is something that we have done since we were children. On Sunday afternoons my mother would chase us outside after a large noon meal to run off energy. Two of my brother’s played football on the high school team so they always wanted to get in extra practice time. Our backyard football games were usually friendly and care was used not to get too rough with tackling. It seems as we are getting older, and have added in-laws into our games of backyard football, the play has gotten rougher.A few weeks ago we were all together at my brother’s home for a barbecue. After we had eaten someone suggested that we play a game of backyard football. We split into teams and decided we would play the siblings against the in-laws. This was our first mistake. A great deal of time has passed since we played backyard football together as kids. I hate to admit it but we are all middle aged. However once the game of backyard football began it seemed like no time had passed since we were playing in our parents yard. We communicated well and soon the siblings had taken a commanding lead in the backyard football game.Well, this was just too difficult for one of my brother in-laws to handle. He is one of those ultra competitive guys and was not happy to be on the losing team. When we next had the ball I noticed that he seemed to be tackling people with a lot of excessive force. One of my brothers’ noticed this also and told him to ease up. This seemed to make him even more determined to keep us from scoring. Soon the friendly backyard football game was getting very serious. One of my brothers passed the ball to my youngest sister. She caught it and started for the end zone. My brother-in-law tackled her from behind and fell with his full weight on her leg. She cried out in pain and dropped the ball.One of my nieces is studying to be a doctor. She ran over to look at her aunt’s leg. She insisted that we take her to the hospital to have x-rays taken. My car was the closest so we loaded her in and went to the emergency room. The x-rays confirmed that she had broken a bone in her foot as well as her shin. As the doctor was setting her leg and putting on the cast she said that it would be fun to tell everyone how she had been hurt. After hearing the story though, she said we might want to think about playing an activity that was a little less physical, perhaps cards or something like that. While that didn't seem to be what we wanted to hear at the time, we haven't played backyard football again since that day.