“This Was The Eighties!”

 

Today, I returned to being a substitute teaching assistant, helping supervise school lunch and recess at the Montessori School, Capitol Campus. It was fun to see these kids again after a month’s interruption for the holidays: transitional kindergartners (TK), lower EL (grades 1-3), and upper EL (grades 4-6). Recess and lunch is different in some ways than I remember from my childhood, but some aspects remain timeless. 

First up was TK lunch. The kids were brought into the lunchroom in cohorts. Hand sanitizer was provided to clean hands on the go. Many of the lunch food items were sealed in plastic pouches of great durability, and difficult for a young child to open. Some of the kids handed over the pouches for me to open, and I was barely able to do so, resorting to brute force. The kids were amused by my facial expressions. (One advantage older folks have over the youngers is having better faces for making faces.) Conversation ensued. Several kids pointed to pepperoni packets to register their approval of spicy food. One kid used celery sticks to make convincing tusks for a walrus impression. Good times. 

Afterwards, the older kids came for lunch – I think upper EL. I was stationed at the tables just outside the lunchroom. There was a girls’ table, with one girl getting her hair braided by her friend. Lots of shifty eyes over there, with kids surreptitiously hitting each other when they thought no one else was looking. At a nearby guys’ table, someone spilled milk, which dribbled down the sock of one of the guys. Suddenly a student raced out of the lunchroom, paused, spit up, and then threw up a bit. “Are you OK? Why did you throw up?” I asked. He looked back to the lunchroom, turned back to me, and said, “It was too loud in there.” I found this explanation to be completely baffling. An inner ear thing? Who knows? He quickly left. I did what I could to clean up the mess. I was glad for the hand sanitizer in the lunchroom. 

After my own lunch, it was time for the best part of the day, TK recess. The littles are so imaginative; they are barely tethered to reality. Always a good time with them. 

But first, it was necessary to watch a couple of YouTube videos to get into spirit for recess. The kids stood in a circle and mirrored the movements of the dancers in the videos. The first video was the “Gimme That Garbage!” video (see above). Inspired by the music and the street scene in the second half of the video, one of the girls exclaimed “This was the Eighties!” (Ah, the remote past.) 

At recess, music poured out of a couple of portable speakers. The kids danced to their favorite tunes. Today, their favorite songs were “Bad Blood” by Taylor Swift, and “Believer” by Imagine Dragons. 

I tried hard to watch the kids and foresee accidents before they happened. There were two banged knees today, so I was not completely successful. At one point, I intervened when a girl was screaming for help while sliding backwards down the slide. I was embarrassed: they were playing a melodramatic game where the girl played a daughter-in-distress and another girl played the rescuing mother. 

Some of the boys started digging a hole, but were reprimanded for their choice of location, under a couple of basketball hoops. So they started digging elsewhere. I came to inspect their two-inch-deep hole, and asked, “So, are you digging for hidden treasure?” One kid exclaimed, “Yes! We are digging for amethyst! The deeper we dig, the more amethysts will float up out of the hole, until we finally reach (and holding out his arms as if grabbing a watermelon) The Great Amethyst!” Another boy had a different explanation. “We’re trying to reach the Earth’s Core. About a meter down we’ll reach the Earth’s Mantle.” I was impressed: geologists had left me with a different understanding of the mantle’s depth. 

Many of the kids were runners. One kid said, “I’m the fastest! Wanna see?” He then ran around the jungle gym. Another girl joined him for a second lap, and she outran him. So, I suppose you don’t have to actually outrun others in order to be the fastest. Another kid exclaimed, “I’m Scottish and I’m running even though my knee is hurt.” He had colorful bandages on his knee for proof, and I saw him zoom past several times. A third kid exclaimed “I’m sonic!” He did his best to be so. 

Reality tried to intervene, with a fire not that far from campus, along the American River, but the fire department got a quick handle on it. Then a girl roped me into her play, first as a zombie, and then as a pterodactyl. At first, I was the dinosaur hatchling and she was the mother; then vice versa. But I had to keep my eyes on all the kids; not just her. Time to roam. 

Afterwards, it was time for recess for the older kids, and Club M (after-school care until the parents picked up their kids). A lot of time standing around watching kids on the playground, and intervening if necessary. I’m still hampered by not knowing everyone’s names, but that will come with time. 

A kid came around who I had talked with last month: the new kid in school, without many friends, maybe a bit doleful. Last month we talked about space travel. Today, he started comparing our heights. I mentioned that I seem to be getting shorter with age; maybe some deterioration in the spine. He replied, “We start to die when we’re twenty-five years old. The number of replacement cells can’t keep up with the number of dying cells.” With that cheerful note he went to go sit down on the swings. 

So, a good day, tempered by memories of recesses past, long before the remote Eighties. Maybe someday school experiences like today’s will start to seem tedious, but not yet.