Remember recess? It’s an old joke that’s new with every child the first time they’re asked by a sincere adult, “What’s your favorite class?” They cleverly answer, “Recess.” God forbid we should have any part of the school day that kid’s actually enjoy, so recess has been done away with. In it’s place is adult supervised, structured, and safe activity. In the minds of some current educators the term is akin to cursing. I’m convinced that this crop of educators who have killed recess are a collection of those to whom recess was torture. They were the ones in the corner of the playground. The ones who had an enemy who took full advantage of the free for all attitude of recess to unleash a 55 minute reign of terror.
The year is 1982 and I’m in the third grade at East Side Elementary in Marshall, MN. Mrs. Shultz (who bore a striking resemblance to the Hogan’s Heroes character of the same name) would direct us to, ‘walk until you get outside’ which meant that when we hit the door we were in another world. Kids scattered all over the asphalt playground and grassy field in a display of creative chaos, racing for the swings, heading for the see saw. During this hour each day, we learned to be a society. Governments were formed, alliances were created, enemies were avoided (or confronted), and an unwritten set of rules governed the world. Time was precious and so wasting it wasn’t an option. A game must be chosen and so on this day, kickball takes over the diamond. The athlete or the pretty girl has the red rubber ball and decides who the two captains will be. Some days a couple of equally ambitious popular kids are chosen and some days it’s a couple of equally inept and shy youngsters who don’t want to offend anybody. The choosing is a scary business as you waited for your name to be called. If you were called early it meant that you were in demand and expectations were high. You’d better not disappoint or your name might be called toward the back of the pack tomorrow. It didn’t matter who you were, you felt bad for the last kids chosen but you were glad that today it wasn’t you. Now positions are chosen and a lineup for kicker is determined. The whole process takes less than two minutes meaning that modern leaders could learn a thing or two about avoiding gridlock from kids who were determined not to waste time with paralysis by analysis.
My personal favorite was dodgeball in all of its primal violence. I remember like it was this morning, the dodgeball crowd was made up of the brave who bore the scars and scabs of tasting asphalt and picking it out of your knees and palms. The feeling of running the gauntlet between two sides who were throwing with the intent to kill, ducking under one and leaping over another before reaching the other side of the field without a scratch was intoxicating. My buddy Tanner had the accuracy and force to put an imprint in the side of your head if you weren’t watching. A cage rattling shot from a half inflated ball stung enough to make the nice kids cry. In the third grade, we had no time for girls, unless they played dodgeball. Erin Olsen, with her short brown hair, friendly smile, and new shoes, asked to play one day. We obliged. Erin hit the game with the grace and ferocity of a cute ninja. Watching to the left, she didn’t notice my shot from the right that took her legs out and she hit the ground with a crack. I ran out to make sure she was still alive and when she looked up blinking back tears, I looked at her face for the first time. I knew what she looked like before but now I really ‘saw’ her, and I fell in love. I was, after all responsible for her injury. It was a strange feeling that would lead to my first gift to a girl, an Erase a Mate pen (that had erasable ink). I ended up breaking my first heart at recess when I noticed the new girl, Holly. It was at recess that I learned that having two girlfriends at the same time is not a good thing. Is there a class in school that teaches that? I don’t think so.
Danger was a part of the world and it seemed that every day, somebody had a battle scar to show off. A black eye, goose egg on the forehead, ice pack on a wrist, or the common cut chin from not paying attention when walking by the swings. In the winter the snow would be piled up at the end of the playground in a mountain of ice that was about as exciting as Disneyland. Snow slides, king of the hill, and digging caves were activities that that snow pile would provide for a limited amount of time. As the sun warmed the land in spring, our precious mountain would shrink and so we learned to deal with disappointment and loss and the fact that new seasons bring some beautiful changes.
At recess, we learned things that sitting at a desk will never teach. We learned to laugh, organize, get along, deal with heartbreak and pain, create, survive, take care of ourselves and each other, build relationships, and enjoy life to the utmost.
Whether we like it or not, life is recess. God has let us loose on the playground, not to fend for ourselves, but to show us what is in us that we can’t see yet. It seems as though God believes in us more than we believe in ourselves or each other. Even though God calls us to grow, I wonder if we ever really grow up?