Recently
I have been working odd days here and there at a school helping out with
general office duties, and being an all round smiley person to greet
disgruntled parents. As it was a primary school the children ranged from age
four up to eleven. It is such a shock to see masses of little beings running
around, talking about nonsensical topics, exercising their right to be inept
and confused about everything, and being conscientiously small.
I was rather taken aback by this.
As I looked back upon being that age
myself, I found my brain had to work very hard to understand and remember just
how different life is when you are at an age where height restrictions still
apply at fairgrounds. Well, if I couldn’t remember, I was about to get a crash
course in current-child-affairs as I sat there clicking away happily (I use
that term lightly) at my desk, I was asked if I would be able to, at lunch
time, vacate my desk and current duties to become what is now labelled as a
lunchtime supervisor (that’s a dinner lady to you and me.)
How I was welcomed into the role immediately
(luckily I didn’t have to wear one of those green aprons that all dinner ladies
seem to be compelled to wear) and I was transported to the clear concrete
jungle of a playground to ensure no child gets transformed into a human bowling
pin or at the very least to deal with multiple requests of ‘please, ca ca ca ca
can I go to the toilet, please, Mr?’
I was soon bombarded with questions
by the General Small Person’s Republic of Dimwittedness, most poignantly I was
asked my name, to which I was unhappily obliged to answer or else face death by
salivation drowning with the seventeen children that had climbed aboard my
vessel poking their fingers and tongues inside my eyes and ears respectively.
‘My name’, I said with confidence
‘is Visitor,’ pointing diligently at my unpeeling sticker upon my shirt. Well,
this was a sad error on my part, as my tact to disinterest them from my entire
person was mis-communicated and they took this as a sign to engage
sugar-rush-kill-the-new-man mode and commenced a level of excitement before
unseen in the territories of first greetings and I was being dragged by the
shirt in either direction – sure that any moment there my beloved was going to
receive a call saying something along the lines of ‘Yes, hello. I’m sorry to
report that there has been an accident. Yes. Mr Russell expired on the
playground today. He was torn in half by a child who is behind in Mathematics
and a girl who has a severe adoration for Snickers. Despite the children’s best
efforts to stick him back together with saliva and chewing gum, Jason was unable
to be glued back together.’
I changed tactic and told them that
I was Mr Russell.
Well, this only exited them further,
and several other children ran away to whisper under giggles to their friends
behind a cupped hand that the strange new man with a torn shirt has a name.
I observed any escape route
possible, but found that I had a following of at least seven thousand children
now glancing up expectantly, until one of them, a tubby little thing with
curling ginger hair squealed ‘Your name is Mr Brussels’ which brought raptures
of laughter for miles around. This then started another game called Name the
Man Something Remotely Stupid, to which I was then observed to be: Mr Muscle,
Mrs Brussels, Mrs Guzzle, Mr Puzzle – anything that ended with the phonetic
sound of ‘el’, really.
Escaping humiliation by whimpering
into a corner, I watched the game of football which was taking place, with two
sets of jumpers placed poles apart from each other, unequal in their distances,
and a flock of varying sized children commenced rushing in charges after a ball
which had less bounce than a breeze block.
As you may be guessing, I was
checking my watch almost split-secondly to see just how much longer I had left
to endure this eventful displeasure. I was soon crowded again by a small group
of children who were unimpressed by my inability to engage with their antics.
‘Do you wear pink dresses?’ One
asked.
‘Why yes, I just love to,’ I
replied.
‘I thought so,’ this tubby little
girl with fingers like tree stumps said, positively serious. ‘Are you a baby?’
she continued.
‘Yes, can’t you just tell by looking
at me? I have a huge dummy at home, this big,’ and commenced to stretch my arms
as far wide as possible, thinking this may deter her from asking more questions
but this just seemingly made her more inquisitive.
‘Do you sleep in a cot then too?’
‘Yes, it’s as large as this
playground, so I can roll in it all day. Just like this.’ I then wrestled her
to the ground, rolled her up tightly and gave her a gentle nudge with my boot
to which she screamed as I watched her skittle all the other children in the
distance. I never really, of course, she was way too heavy.
But I was getting ready for a
whistle or whatever they used these days to summon children to stop licking the
floor and take their fingers from their noses.
I was approached upon manoeuvring my
way behind a wall where I could stand in hopeful peace, by two small girls that
observed me with discontent.
‘Do you work in the nursery?’ they
asked.
Exasperated by trying to sound
enthusiastic, I replied ‘no, but don’t tell me, I look like a baby?’
They looked at each other pulling a
curious face but shrugged off my indignation with a reply of ‘you look like Mr
Adams.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ I replied,
‘Thank you.’ I wasn’t sure who Mr Adams was, but I guessed he must be a real
handsome chap.
‘You’ve got the same shoes as Mr
Adams,’ they both said, and nodded to each other in agreement, before
continuing, ‘yep, and you’ve got the same trousers as Mr Adams. You’ve got the
same belt as Mr Adams, and the same shirt as Mr Adams.’ They kept nodding
sequentially. ‘You’ve even got the same head
as Mr Adams!’
The more observant one interjected
at this, ‘well, he’s got the same hair
as Mr Adams. But he’s not got the same face.’
‘Yes,’ the other one agreed, ‘you’ve
got the same hair as Mr Adams, but you’ve not got the same face.’ They both
smiled, and then ran off to skip, portraying mannerisms belonging to The Wizard of Oz.
I dealt with a couple of children
who had ran over to me to say that they had been pushed over by somebody, to
which I resolved by telling them to go over and push them back harder, to which a brawl then broke out somewhere near the back bench and
a woman in a green apron went to split it up with a harsh shout of ‘STOP’ and a
playground of little people then soiled themselves simultaneously.
Me too, if honesty is the approach
were taking.
I was delighted to note that just a
few moments later – half way into dealing with an enquiry from a girl who had
lost all of her friends in a space no larger than, well, a school playground – a
mighty blow of a whistle sounded, and all children stopped, freezing upon the
spot – some mid air, others balancing upon one hand upside down (impressive in
most people’s book.) When the second sounding of a whistle went, everyone
manoeuvred from their stationary positions, collapsing in heaps, and landing
with thuds, then commenced to rush into parallel lines, to which I almost felt
myself systematically copying until I realised all other people within my
vicinity were less than five feet tall.
If only, I thought, as the hour
dispersed with sudden alacrity. I entered my realm of normality again, clicking
a computer keyboard for the remainder of my day. But, even for that short,
feverous natured capsule of time that had elapsed; I was glad that I had been
in the world of Child Vision.
