BH 14: The first heat day indoors
In this early edition of Body High, we begin at a school in Southern Cali
A severe-weather emergency was in effect. There would be no outdoor activities for the kids staying on campus after class. Temperatures were up to 108 on the playground, next to the shielded tables where we gathered the elementary school students.
Usually for snacks.
We scooped them up in a handful of minutes and got everyone into air conditioned spaces. As an activity director, my play for the day was to be a volume operator. These were a dozen fifth graders at the end of a demanding school day. I would throw a lot of options at ’em for a couple of hours. Drawing and card games.
That shit did not work. My kids, whom I’d been teaching to play 21 and Crazy 8s, mostly outdoors, weren’t that competent at cards yet. Meanwhile, pent-up, end-of-day energy made the children who were not in a Crazy 8s game explosively distracting.
Across the afternoon, my struggle to maintain order was uninterrupted. Items in our host classroom that were not supposed to be touched were indeed touched. Things that were not to be sat upon had asses all over them. We literally made the next day’s announcements.
As I would confess to my supervisor, I was not in control.
Damn that heat.
My KCRW half hour story about coaching Little League in South Pasadena came to mind after that. My team of undersized and unsettled 10 year olds went on a big losing streak and I tried to keep it together. This first heat day indoors fail hurt different; outdoors I’d had the upper hand.
The change of venue’s significance blindsided me.
In the Green Goblins story, the team settles at the end and becomes competent. The team’s discontented star even throws a no hitter. That story is real, but it’s also a piece of craft. JD Vance’s book is not his life. And trying to govern a classroom—not your own—stocked with children who’s bodies are used to having complete release is no game.
It’s no art project, either.
I’m pretty sure Madame President-to-Be said, “I’m going to enjoy this”
as she shook Trump’s hand.
On the next heat day we moved into the library, with variable results.
At minimum my demeanor was cooler. I tried to take the students from drawing to writing, with no real success. The card games were played on the edge of chaos. Checkers entered the frame. Then, I gathered a half dozen of my charges into the corner for a game of charades.
Few children, in my experience, aren’t coping with shyness on some level or another. It’s part of the gig that is Emerging.
Years ago I’d go to LA parties where charades was a staple, a get-together go-to. Acting culture was established. With these kids—a lot of them immigrants— that peculiar culture so is not a thing. The dynamic was the Freshest thing I’ve seen in ages.
The class clown who’s a shameless and constant distraction morphs into a different human in the context of this parlor game.
Body High is now free, too
I’m just sayin’.
Ten minutes before I was to clock out, a dozen or so more children came streaming into the library. Among them were the school’s youngest kids, driven into my cool room by the heat.
Some of the little ones saw what we were up to in the corner and asked in. Their youth deepened all of it. The eleven year old and the five year old might be at the same level of fear about open expression and audience. I saw a born performer, probably a kindergartner. She took to charades like it was riding a bike.
Which might not be the apt analogy I think it is.
The heat wave ended on Tuesday night. That symphony of charades play stays with me, pretty much heals the wound of the first heat day indoors.