Kickball Diaries 2
Maybe it’s the late nights and early mornings, maybe it’s because I run around outside all day, but I haven’t had a dream in weeks.
Last night it started on a kickball field. There were two teams, all adults, and only one person I recognized—my friend M., a drinking buddy. The field was a blacktop school yard: an amalgam of my first elementary and the school at which I work.
The game must have caught the attention of a YouTube vlogger, who ended up hanging out with our group. Afterward, she came back to my house and slept downstairs on the couch. She was there the next morning, and I thought how nice it was to make a random connection with someone over the Internet. I left the living room to get dressed, but when I returned, she was gone, though she didn’t turn off the television. I looked around the house, and then outside, but she’d left.
I stayed outside on the front steps and lit a cigarette. In the street was a homeless father and child. It was still dark out and very early in the morning. They were making themselves comfortable on a large piece of cardboard. I thought from how they were dressed that they might have been Hasidic. As I put out my cigarette and opened my front door, a large brown van pulled up. Two figures jumped out and forced the father and son to get inside.
Field Day
The kids were broken up into teams (four), each with a corresponding color. I’d spent the better part of the week making sure these teams were fair and that everyone was in a game that they had a chance to succeed in. All of that went to shit this morning when more than a handful of them went absent.
Still, I scrambled to reorder the lineup and things went more or less without a hitch. When one team was sure they were going to steamroll an undermanned squad in dodgeball—and did for a large portion of the match—a single and extremely feisty 9-year-old girl fended off seven larger children until she’d eliminated all but one of them (her team got a bonus point). Two kickball matches led to more quarrels between counselors representing the teams than amongst the kids themselves. Testosterone levels reached critical mass, but there were no bruises, not even a bee sting, and I’m pretty sure I was put on this earth to lead games of Keep It Up.
At the end, the kids gave me a round of applause to thank me for running the day’s events. I give thanks for making it through my first field day alive to the three cups of coffee I drank around 9, and Ms. J for putting on the pot.
The Kickball Diaries
My summer job is at a day camp. I’m out in the sun all day playing kickball with kids, mostly. They don’t seem to have the attention span for much else.
I have no idea what I’m doing out there, but I have a whistle. And I’m covered in mosquito bites.
