Wednesday 5/15/24
I don't feel well but walked three miles, did 100 push-ups, ran fifty circuits on the stairs at the Connecticut gate outside of the Bunker Hill Monument.
Was sitting at the top of the stairs coughing after I was done, and there were these kids--probably third graders--who'd been doing grammar exercises with their teachers and were now involved in an athletic grammar game.
They made two lines, the kids. Boys against the girls, but there were more boys than girls so two of the boys had to join the girls team. Each of the two teachers stood maybe twenty feet off from each line and you had to run up and answer a grammar question pertaining to the word the teacher was holding up on a piece of paper and then you ran back and tapped the person next in line and they took off.
These kids were frantic! It was awesome. There's a video of it on my Instagram page. But the boys cheated in the first two games, alas, boys being boys. It was pretty funny and they were into it. When I first got there, the kids were sitting on the grass and they had to identify root words and suffixes, and I thought, huh, these third graders know more about grammar based on what I'm hearing than just about any adult. Depressing. But these kids, presumably, are going to unlearn what they know right now, just as those adults once knew what these kids know today.
One of the teachers was more the leader. When the game was over and she was trying to settle the kids down, she said, "One, two, three, eyes on me!" and the kids all went, "One, two, eyes on you!" I'm thinking, this is great. I would have loved this. Another time she said, "Hocus..." and the kids all went, "Focus!" Then they were paying attention again.
People get very grand in their attempts to make memories. There's the big wedding, all of that jazz. But this is the stuff of the purest memories, the memories we turn to when times are tough later on--maybe much later on--or memories we think about when we want to help someone else make their special memories. These kids didn't know it, but a lot of them will remember something like this. What a great little outing for them.
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