Youthful Innocence

Nothing brings out one’s inner child like playing tag and tossing a frisbee with a slew of 8-13 year olds. How did this happen? Well, I’ll tell you (*singing* he’s going to tell, he’s going to tell!, etc.)…

As mentioned in a previous post, I’m part of an organization called the Progressive Student Alliance. It’s composed of several committees, including one known as the Lehigh Workers Appreciation Committee (LWAC). Part of our mission is to organize events that are enjoyable for Lehigh’s workers. Today’s plan was to have a picnic for Lehigh’s groundskeepers. Because many of them only speak Spanish, we had trouble communicating this event to them, but we did our best to get the word out about the time and location and hoped they would come.

Predictably, no workers came. However, we were holding this picnic in the Martin Luther King park, only a few blocks from Lehigh’s main campus but in a fairly urban area. Eventually, a kid from across the street wandered over into our picnic, and we welcomed him with open arms. We ate, hung out, and generally had a good time because a lot of students (even ones not in PSA) showed up, as food tends to attract college students like flies to vinegar.

Then, a family arrived at that park with their kids and their kids’ friends, about 10 children in total. For a while, our group remained separated from their’s, the kids choosing to fool around in the playground area as we sat on our blankets and watched on in bemusement. Soon, one of the kids from this new group approached us and asked, “Anyone want to play tag?” Tentatively, a few of us agreed, spurring others to do the same until half of the LWAC group was standing up, ready to play tag with kids no older than half their age.

Initially, I was a bit disturbed by the kids’s method of choosing who was “it” first: it was similar to “Eenie meenie minie moe” but involved a rhyme about someone’s balls breaking and asking what color was his blood (I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried). Honestly, tag was a load of fun. I played all the time in elementary school but not much since then. Little kids can be deceptively quick and nimble, leading to some great chases and cat-and-mouse action. Everyone was pretty respectful, making sure that no one suffered more than a minor scrape or bruise.

Tag gets tiring fast, so kids would gradually break off and join the other LWACers to hit a volleyball around in a circle. After maybe an hour, the last of those playing tag (myself among them) called it off and switched over to the volleyball circle, followed by frisbee. The more we played, the more we learned each others’ names (one was James but had the nickname Jay, leading to some confusing situations) and personalities. Although I’m not a big fan of children (probably because I still remember what brats my brothers and I were as kids), I really liked these boys and girls; I heard a few mean-spirited remarks exchanged between some of them, but otherwise, they were all right. One kid, whose name I missed, even tried to impress us by combining break dancing and frisbee tossing; it didn’t always work as planned (he fell down… a lot), but the effort was endearing.

While our picnic was technically a failure as a workers picnic, it instead served as a form of community outreach. Lehigh has serious town-gown relationship problems, and I like to think that today showed the kids and their parents a different side of Lehigh students than they normally see. Regardless, everyone had a great time, and I have a more positive attitude about children now. Should I really ask for more than that?