My kids went skating this week…the first field trip they’ve been on in over a year. They skate at walking tracks and around the house but the big rink was pretty new for most of them.
One of the dad’s asked me if my kids had ever been to a rink before. I pondered and couldn’t remember which ones had and which ones hadn’t. He mentioned that every rink in the country, as far as he knew…the people skated counter clockwise. Well…now…being a trivia buff…..a variable cornucopia of useless information….I thanked him for the tidbit for my file.
It wasn’t until after we arrived home and the children were complaining about the multiple blisters on their feet that I heard them say that they wished they started going clockwise sooner….so their feet wouldn’t hurt.
I asked them what they meant. They said that they decided to turn around and go the other way because their feet were hurting on the same side. It didn’t concern them a bit that they were scaring the puddin’ out of everyone else on the floor…three girls plowing their way INTO the traffic pattern. WATCH OUT!! THE MARLOW MOB IS COMING THROUGH!!
I’m going to find that father next month and tell him that I’m a bit obtuse…that he needs to be right out in my face telling me that my kids were going the wrong way on the skating rink!!
It reminds me of a time a gaggle of home school kids met at the park for field day. I yelled for them to make a big circle and they meandered and looked around in confusion. The mom’s had to go out and help them make a big circle. Making two lines was just as foreign to them… just as trying to make four teams, I had them ‘count off’…explained again how to count off and had to walk each kid through it because they just didn’t understand why they were number four and then after counting them through it, most of them didn’t remember what number they were! Surely every first grade teacher didn’t have to go through that! I guess someone had to teach them…it’s something I thought I was born with…but those home schoolers were as dull witted about it as anything I’d ever seen.
Home school kids don’t stand in line like public schooled kids. They know how to stand in line at Walmart but the concept of standing in line to go out of a door or to go into a door or to go to the bathroom or to get a drink is just Greek to them. That day I watched as a horde of sweaty, thirsty kids arrived at the one water fountain at the park. There was no first come, first serve, get in the back of the line…because there was no line. It wasn’t toughest and meanest got the water first either.….the smallest paying big brother tax on the side lines someplace hoping for a slurp. I was pretty impressed how civilized they were but there was no actual order to the process.
I started thinking about how many lines kids in public school stand in ….at least for the first six years of school. Like I said…line up for the bus, for recess, for going in from recess, for lunch…for coming back from lunch… for going back to the bus.. Then they go to junior high and there are no more lines. In real life…what is all that training in lines going to prepare them for? Michael said, “Well…there’s the un-employment line, the food stamp line, the Medicaid line….”
Makes me think.
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