For the entire recess we would play this game. We would throw the ball so high against the two story school. This was until the nuns impractically devised a made up reason why we were no longer allowed the throw the ball up against the wall. They argued, the Catholic engineers that they were, that our bouncing the balls against the school building would "wear" away a brick wall. Really? Even we little Catholics with more prayer memorized than physics knew it was such a lie. They would Draw out this extravagant story on how this would happen.
My theory is that they saw us having too much fun, pure joy, great connection, and there was no place for that. it didn't go with the uniforms. But I loved the pinky ball game called 7UP, made me think of the yummy soda during recess.
Anyone remember playing with a "Footsie?" This was a classic 70s schoolyard toy approved by nuns and teachers alike. You carried it to school and put you foot inside the loop and swung it around to play. The other foot would have to skip up to keep the string in motion. On the other end of the string there was a pink/red cup like piece with a bell instead it. The bell, only lasted a day before it fell out from the centrifugal force of the swing. I remember having one, carrying it on the schoolbus and playing "footsie" next to my friends.
In the
schoolyard children of school age are able to work out their own differences, inequities,
and disputes without the help of the teacher.
In the schoolyard, only now somewhat supervised, you knew who to stay away
from who to form alliances with, who was the tattletale, the baby, the teacher’s
pet, and who just stood around watching,
following the action. Yes, in the schoolyard you were able to begin
to exercise morality, it was fair in your world without the help of mommy and
daddy, or a teacher who only knows a fraction of the whole story.
I loved the
play in the schoolyard and it was so important for us young adults to be able
to figure things out. In Catholic grade
school, there were not any playground equipment but you did have the blank
canvas of a large piece of pavement, large enough to create bases for kickball,
play jump rope, run and play tag or in the winter “Squish the Melon” we would also invent games to play. On our
side, the girl’s side, past the pavement
we had a large Weeping Willow Tree. In
the springtime, the branches would blow in the breeze in a fresh green color,
when the bud came out you could grab a bunch of branches with your hands, run
and get a type of lift. The nuns let us
do this then decided we were having too much fun and disallowed us from doing
such a crime by “writing our names down” on a piece of paper. This writing names down on a piece of paper was
like a martini for nuns. They loved doing
it. For those of you who aren’t familiar,
Weeping Willow trees grow sturdy and strong.
There is no way that school age children would be able to crush this
mile high Weeping Willow. The gulps of
laughter and a satisfied smile when reentering the school after recess was
enough for the runs to find some kind of reason to the stop the happiness. If
the nun already took your name down, then you might as well keep on swinging. Your Catholic punishment was writing down 100
times “I will not swing on the tree.” Why
did they do that, teaching us how to waste of time instead of learning something? I mean they could have told us to find South
Africa on a map. No geography would make
you smart and worldly.
In winter
the fun thing to do in this blank parking lot was to find frozen puddles and slip
and slide on them with our Catholic shoes.
Hey, they were good for something.
There was a rule as to who could go first who’s puddle it was, who was
pushed, who would go tattle on you, all things we would agree to or not and in
later life of adulthood, we would find these patterns repeated in the workplace.
The leader emerged in play, the mediators also resolved many arguments from their
taletellers and babies. The babies are
the ones who go crying to the teacher over some little scratch or blame you for
their sunburn. I miss the way we worked things would as capable children
without helicopter parents or teachers.
We invented our own games and decided among ourselves, the rights and
wrongs of our actions. We flexed our
ability to make decisions, make friends, and stay away from the kids who always
wanted to fight. We even had designated place
in line as the school bell rang. The
first ones in line were brown nosers, the middle of the line was OK but to be
last was to be an outcast for the day.
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