Things I Have Learned From Working With Children - #2

Packpacks.

This is the innovative, evolved term for the back pack.

Packpacks.

Which all, oddly, run the same in terms of size, despite the size of the child.

I see children with packpacks banging against their shins as they walk, because, when measured, they only clear their packpack by a head. In many cases the packpack weighs nearly as much as they do.

"I forgot my packpack."

It's the sports car for first graders. Some models are white with saucer-sized polka dots. Some are drenched with red and black webs while Spiderman peeks over the side. Some are adorned with the cast of High School Musical or Bratz.

"It's in my packpack"

What you find in a packpack tells a lot about the child. One little girl was hoarding milk cartons, which naturally need refrigeration, which naturally was not a feature of this particular packpack. The foul stench of milk permeated everything. I helped this little girl pull her glasses case out, and three full bottles of lens cleaner solution. Three.
She diplomatically decided which items were important enough to bring inside and which needed to air out with the packpack. I wanted to hug this little girl tightly as she bravely brushed aside the fact that not only was she caught with a lot of extra food in her packpack, but that one of the very cartons gave her away to the staff.

The sense of propriety over the packpack, yet the complete lack of boundary awareness when it comes to anything else is what fascinates me about kids. The logical train of thought that "Yes... it is my packpack. What is a backpack? What is wrong with me calling it packpack?" Yet if I call the game room "Games room" I get the vicious "It's the GAME room" response.

I can only chalk it up to the ever-growing list of contradictions when it comes to youth.

Things I Have Learned From Working With Children - #1

There is nothing like an open gym.

By "open gym," I do not mean a time when individuals come in of their own valition and engage in a pick-up game of b-ball.

I mean the potential, the leftover stank, the dormant, empty, open gym. Waiting. Resting.

Its floor is healing itself from the many sets of feet which pounded it the day before.

Its walls are nursing bruises from wayward dodgeballs and handprints in a hurry to "tag" it.

The echoes have evaporated into the ripe, sweatified mist hanging above you, even in the chillest of winter days.

It is the one room that is full in its emptiness. Needs no decoration nor filler.

Like a blank page of paper it beckons - run inside of me. There are no lines until you make them. I can be whatever you need right now.