photo: Drimi/Dreamstime.com

It’s in here somewhere. We’re opening the door of my garden shed. Daylight floods in, revealing a lawnmower, a selection of essential garden tools, a Christmas tree stand and an ash-encrusted barbecue grill. So far, so tidy.

The back half of this musty shack is another story. For 25 years it has served as the prime repository for household detritus — the kind of stuff other people stash under the stairs, out in the garage, up in the attic or down in the basement.

There is no structure to this pile of junk. If I pull out the wrong piece, the whole lot could crash down on us. So we’ll gingerly skirt round the edge and lift the dusty, cobweb-draped kiddie pool that hides much of the mess. Move these mildewed golf clubs. And these snow boots. And two electric irons. And a rusty toaster. And plenty of other stuff, some mundane, some embarrassing. At last, tucked among it all, here’s the thing I wanted to show you.

Most people have one somewhere. It’s an archetypal element of miscellaneous junk. This one is molded in rigid yellow plastic, slightly chewed around the outer rim by my late golden retriever.

“Is that what this is about?” you ask. “A Frisbee?”

This is not the only Frisbee I’ve owned. There have been several since childhood. Perhaps they’re all in the shed, concealed within the older strata of junk. They were usually purchased on beach holidays, then discarded. This one would have had the same early fate had my dog, Holly, not rooted it out when she was still a puppy.

Over the years, we devised three distinct Frisbee codes: catch and return, catch and run away, and catch and bury. I always did the throwing and Holly always decided which variation we were playing. As she grew old and arthritis set in, the Frisbee increasingly lay neglected around the garden. I’m not sure if it was before or after she died that it was finally consigned to the shed.

If one man and his dog can derive hours of sporting enjoyment from a Frisbee, imagine what a whole bunch of people could do with the same basic prop.

In fact, they have. In 1968, at Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J., a group of friends started to play a Frisbee team game. From those casual beginnings, a sport was born. It was initially called Ultimate Frisbee. Later, because “Frisbee” is a trademark, it became simply “Ultimate.”

Ultimate is played between two equal teams of up to seven active players on each side. The playing area is roughly equivalent to a football field, with two end zones. Scores are achieved when a player catches the flying disc in the opposition’s end zone. Teammates can throw the disc to one another but can’t run with it. Throws can be intercepted, but there is no physical tackling. Matches are governed by sportsmanship (players call it the “spirit of the game”) rather than referees.

I’d love to try out some Ultimate throwing techniques with you, but we’ve already run into an occupational hazard. My first practice throw was wayward. The yellow Frisbee is now lodged firmly in the upper branches of a eucalyptus tree.

Perhaps we can throw a tennis ball at it to knock it down — 10 points for a hit. It’s a new sport in the making: Ultimate Ultimate.