A Wii is a kind of electronic console, of the X-Box genus, that hooks to the TV. It includes a host of games, such as racing, sports, and adventure and shoot-em-ups. The difference between this kind of game and others, which operate only with a button-filled panel or a joystick, is that the user may create the motions he/she wants the actors on the monitor to perform.

Arthur explained that if he were to swing his arms in circles, the figure on TV would do the same. We also talked about the case in which an exuberant man swung too hard and clobbered his spectator girlfriend in the process. Arthur said there is now a wrist strap that makes it harder for the user to take violent swings — and injure someone.

Even with the risks, it’s encouraging that the Wii provides some physical movement. How much of a workout does one get by endless text-messaging on the cell phone, which goes on in church, class, home, anywhere else there are willing participants?

As I write this, nine neighbors are playing Dance Dance Revolution. The youngest ones, about 16 and 11, stand on a pad filled with symbols that need to be stepped on in order to keep pace with a music on the TV screen. This kind of amusement has been shown on Malcolm in the Middle and is a big draw at the City Recreation Center.

Participants need to bounce, jump, move left, right, forward backward, put their left foot in, and the left foot out; that’s what it’s all about.

The neighbors’ Dance Dance Revolution unit has pads for only two players, so seven others — three of whom are members of the Highlands University art, education and psychology faculty, respectively — line up behind them.

Is there a penalty for a misstep? Well, if you’re bouncing on bare concrete, it’s hard to tell. Yet there’s quite an aerobic benefit, as evidenced by the racing pulses and hard breathing when the DDR-ers take a break.

The activity extended into the night, and I admired the fact that so many people joined in and how long they stuck with it. And some players were ancient — some even in their 40s.

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Arizona Republic staffer Karina Bland recently wrote about how the most innocuous of playground games, “tag,” can’t be played anymore at a growing number of elementary schools in the Phoenix metro area.

In some schools, the game of tag has joined others, such as dodge ball and tackle football on the verboten list. Despite some of the salubrious effects of contact games such as tag, a number of states ban tag because, as one principal reported, “Tagging turns into shoving, and someone’s crying, ‘He pushed me!’”

The classic argument against such games is that “Some kids are faster than others,” or “Someone could get hurt,” or “Those who are always ‘it’ might suffer from diminished ego.”

Some schools attempt a compromise in which kids need merely step on someone’s shadow for a tag. If the kids are outside and the sun’s shining, that might work, but it’s hard to find shadows in the school’s all-purpose room/cafeteria.

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What games did all of us play as youngsters? We’d find a ball, or a stick, or a can, or a dog and make up the rules later. And we now realize why whole neighborhoods of kids — at least in the Railroad barrio I grew up in — engaged in day-long games that by today’s standards would be considered life-threatening.

Noo-oo, our health and well-being were far from a consideration on our parents’ part. Rather, our houses weren’t big enough to contain several restless kids, and most of us were escorted out of the house. Or else, we had to help with chores.

One chore I dreaded was having Mom concoct a dough-like substance that she’d have us wad up like biscuit dough and use it to help the new wallpaper stick to our coal- and kerosene-stained walls. If any of that solution was left over, we Trujillos sat down to a pancake supper.

We used to play “Red Rover,” a game in which players chose up sides got in two lines, locked arms and uttered a chant that dared someone we identified to “come over.” Then, with the speed of a San Diego running back, the invitee would lower his head and race toward our line, always aiming for the weakest link. The runner usually broke the chain, and a few collateral links in the area. We’d rub our almost-dislocated shoulders and continue.

How no one ever got seriously hurt baffles me. Of course, the next day we knew why it was impossible even to lift our books on our way to school.

“Crack the whip” surely is taboo on U.S. school grounds, but it was the highlight of the day at Immaculate Conception School. One of the nuns, Sister Peccata Mundi, always took playground duty and clearly enjoyed the physical activity she observed, even (or especially) the times when our faces became one with the cyclone fence that went up in the mid-‘50s.

Before that, the lighter parts of the whip generally flew across the street, toward the police station that used to reside there. It’s a law of physics that heavier, bulkier objects or pupils generate more mass than lighter things. Accordingly, a really buff student would crack the whip, which consisted of as many as 20 smaller, lighter kids.

The leader, usually George Fram, would race down the playground, with each child joined at the wrist, then stop suddenly and watch as we generated unbelievable speeds, the same way the outside of a hub rotates faster than the core.

A couple of encounters with the cyclone fence put me on injured reserve. On the way home, I met a neighbor friend, Clyde, who consoled me, yet challenged me to a game of “Horse,” as he was the only kid on the block with a basketball. “I’ll even let you go first,” he said.

Each time a person misses, he earns a letter, and once he’s spelled horse, he loses. Well, Clyde quickly put me behind by two, and I suggested simply ending the contest and calling it “Ox,” instead of “Horse.”

“No, we’re going to finish this game,” Clyde said. And we did.

But I was glad Clyde hadn’t chosen to challenge me to a shootout based on a mythological monster mentioned by Cyrano de Bergerac. I was lucky.

The creature, by the way, is Hippocampelephantocamelos.