When we went out to vote on November 7th, my wife and I had to drive by our son’s elementary school. We were mildly amused to spy him, out for recess, playing football in the schoolyard with his classmates.
We parked across the street and watched for a few precious minutes. Since we were not a butterfly, or a jet contrail, or a candy wrapper, or a penny, he didn’t notice us there, so we got to see him in that rarest of settings: “somewhere else,” without his parents or guardians present.
The football activity was hilarious. It alternatingly resembled an algae bloom and an ayatollah’s funeral– first a kind of milling around in an amorphous blob, then a kind of wild melee over a leathery old totem. We watched them drift back and forth for a pleasant minute, with the odd missile launch of the forward pass rocketing rudderless out of the scrum and landing any old place but that most rarified of targets: a teammate.
It was wry to consider that playing tag is verboten at his school. I’m not joking.
The school is getting comical in this regard. They were terrified of the food the little ones were eating, so they tinkered endlessly with the school lunch menu to make it so healthy that no one purchased it anymore. Now everybody eats fluffernutters they bring themselves.
They built an elaborate and very expensive handicapped playground. That’s a kind and thoughtful gesture. But it is merely a gesture, as there are no handicapped children to enjoy it. There just aren’t that many children of any kind in a little town like ours.
And no tag. Someone could get hurt. Someone could be left out. Someone could sue is the real reason, and the powers that be always point that out right up front.
Tag isn’t allowed, so one of the kids brings a football, and they play that. Football isn’t banned, only because no one thought of it yet. The absurdity of allowing mobs of pre-teens to chase one another if one is holding a ball, but not if their hands are empty, seems to be lost on the school administration. At least for now. And I, for one, am glad of it.
I’m not as worried about my son being injured playing football as I am in contemplating the little straitjacket world he’s being fitted for. Those children decided on the rules, supplied their equipment –a ball– and played their game without any adult supervision; and I saw a lot less kvetching among them than at any organized sporting event they participate in. I’m leery of them being told that someone will always tell them exactly what to do, and simultaneously unerringly protect them not only from harm, but hurt feelings. One aspect of that tandem of supervision is repugnant, and the other unlikely.
I’m living in a strange world where people for whom I have no regard draw finely calculated and ultimately meaningless distinctions about everything down to the scope of activities allowed for pedophiles to roam the earth, at the same time they ban children playing tag in the schoolyard. Such distinctions are meaningless because anyone who is prepared to commit a great offense is not concerned about the rules governing small ones.
I dread the day, which is on the horizon now, not over it, when I’m forced to tell my children that the only sensible course of action is to ignore the rules, as there are so many of them that they become gibberish. And what the hell, the rules only seem to apply to those who wish to live worthwhile lives anyway –who never needed them in the first place.
6 Responses
And now I hope to find a soundfile of Andy Griffith's routine of the same title.
Hi Joan- Thanks for reading and commenting. We have what you're looking for at our other blog: What it was, was football.
"[F]ootball isn't banned, because no one thought of it yet."
Loved that line.
Our children could be at the same school, Sippican.
They banned running this year. On the playground, during their miserly twenty minute recess.
I want to choke the women in charge.
As broke as California is, someone somewhere came up with the money to re-do every curb cut in the state. They're being made wider, shallower, and fitted with rain grooves, and some kind of bumpy rubber mat so that, in the off chance a blind person sans cane or guide dog is walking down the sidewalk, he will know that he is approaching an intersection. This, keep in mind, is being done in residential neighborhoods as well as along major thoroughfares and business zones. I've done just enough concrete work to know how expensive, and how hard it is. This stuff takes some seriously skilled labor. Each one of those curb cuts would run you into five figures if you wanted to pay for it yourself. But we can't run short on compassion, and someone somewhere though it would be a nice idea.
JWM
SC said "I dread the day, which is on the horizon now, not over it, when I'm forced to tell my children that the only sensible course of action is to ignore the rules, as there are so many of them that they become gibberish. And what the hell, the rules only seem to apply to those who wish to live worthwhile lives anyway –who never needed them in the first place."
I regret to tell ya that that day has already come, but that the kids have likely already figured it out.
Sadly, when the respect for the imbecilic laws/rules falters, the respect for ALL laws will die.
And with the death of respect for law, so dies the Republic.
Tragic — it makes you want to cry.