The game is called Knockout and it couldn’t be simpler.

A group of young people, those gleaming representatives of our future, walk down a populated street looking for prey. And by prey, I mean you. Or your sister, or wife, or your brother or daughter.

The goal of Knockout is (you may have gleaned this) to knock out a complete stranger with one punch, the desired effect being the victim of the attack falling boneless to the hard ground. If that happens, the kid wins and they all go off giggling and bumping fists.

No, really. There are plenty of video clips of this game in action, and watching them will make your stomach do weird parabolas.

Knockout is happening in cities everywhere, to hear some tell it. It’s not just for embattled Chicago or the mean streets of L.A., the game is played wherever people walk in numbers, going about their lives. The old woman hobbling to the market for food and medicine? A potential participant with a hard-flung fist awaiting.

The quiet man who spends half his life volunteering in soup kitchens and homeless shelters? A fist fueled by youthful exuberance is out there for him, too.

The schoolteacher who has dedicated her life to helping inner-city kids? Oh, irony of ironies, one of those kids is waiting to knock her to the pavement.

It has happened to the young, the old, the man, the woman, the sturdy and the frail. The rules are that there ain’t no rules. The fist might land on the side of your head or at the back of it. Can’t defend yourself because your arms are crammed full of Christmas gifts for the kids? Tough noogies. When you walk along a public street, you have entered the arena, whether you like it or not.

Knockout is the most repugnant thing to come along since … Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? To find something more sickening than the joyous pummeling of the unwary, you have to really put some thought into it. This isn’t knocking on doors and running away. It isn’t throwing eggs or making prank calls. Knockout is a coordinated and vicious game played by unrepentant marauders whose only aim is to put you down.

This isn’t a fight club, either. A fight club pits willing brawlers against each other. Dangerous? Sure. Stupid? Maybe. But your darling daughter or matronly mom isn’t going to become an unwilling player in a fight club. Knockout, on the other hand, gives absolutely nobody the chance to opt out.

There’s one video going around in which an innocuous-looking fellow is walking along a narrow street. He’s a schoolteacher, it turns out, with a briefcase and an armful of classwork. The kids coming at him don’t look like much of a threat — they’re just a chattering crowd of roaming kids, like the ones you see a hundred times a day.

The fist comes around at the back of his head, catching him in that tender area just behind the jaw. The teacher goes down, so effectively dazed by the blow, his arms don’t even go out to break his fall. Crack, goes his head on the curb, and then he just lies there in an unconscious heap while the vermin who hit him go off to their celebrations.

In St. Louis, an elderly man died after receiving a blow from a kid playing the game. In Syracuse, a 51-year-old man succumbed to the same brand of trauma administered by the same breed of lowlife. In Brooklyn, a 78-year-old woman was punched to the ground while carrying groceries home from the market.

And now there’s a story floating around the Internet that has a 60-year-old woman opening fire on a pair of kids who punched her just for the thrill of it. According to some reports, the two kids died of gunshot wounds. In other accounts, there were three kids.

In Lansing, Mich., a man who was an intended victim of the game pulled out a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson and shot the guy who had been swinging at him. The man with the gun was a father picking up his kid at a bus stop. The kid playing Knockout ended up slumped on the curb blubbering and pleading for his life with a hot round of lead in his thigh.

The first one may not be true. The second one almost certainly is. In either case, you just know it’s a hint of things to come. Some cold-hearted kid with eager fists is going to wind up with a knife in his belly or a bullet in his heart and then we’ll all be divided, as always. Half the population will stand up and cheer and insist that the bad guy got what he deserved. The other half will weep and proclaim that this was just a misunderstood kid who needed love and nurturing instead of a chest cavity full of lead.

People will argue, politicians will produce legislation and the wild things on the street will just keep on swinging. Someone will try to make it about race; someone else will try to make it about class. And before you know it, we’ll have forgotten the brute simplicity of the sadistic game called Knockout. Loathsome swarms of fiends are out there looking to hurt you for sport and brother (not to mention sister), you have every right to defend yourself.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. The only way he’ll hit you is with a mean turn of phrase. Email him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.

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