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#Post#: 50--------------------------------------------------
Concentration Are You Ready?
DIR By: StoryGod
Date: December 16, 2019, 4:57 pm
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Albina told herself that she had forgotten what it was like to
be ten years old. She knew that was a lie. Middle school sucked,
but fifth grade was not the worst of it. She remembered herself
as small, and liking to read better than liking to draw. She
remembered her mother remarking that it was unusual that she
would read anything, but there was a lot to read. Drawing was
fun, but reading left you more than you were before. Drawing, by
contrast emptied you out.
Albina had neutral to unpleasant memories of playground games,
but with time they had blurred into memories of gym class, which
only the most athletic and graceful girls like. Albina had never
been one of those. So here, more than half a lifetime later, she
was again leading playground games.
Albina led her charges to the quad in front of
Rapinoe-Conolly-Brinker Athletic Center, and plunked them down
on the grass. For some reason games with words or chants such as
Concentration or the Chinese jump rope games, were a hit. Albina
thought of South Seas tribes people chanting. Fifth graders
might be able to enjoy adult books and magazines, but they were
by no means adults nor even full fledged adolescents. The girls
sat in a circle. They knew the drill and were soon clapping
away.
"Concentration... Are you ready," Albina led the chant.
"If so...let's go... names of... Fruit... such as...."
Around the circle it went. It took three times to put the first
kid out. It was Tikvah. It had to be Tikvah. Here in the warm,
morning sunlight, the girl was no threat. Her report listed her
as a flight risk. "Complicit in spousal kidnapping," was what it
said, and the kidnapping was in April. It was anybody's guess
how much had changed with the child who was still fighting her
parents battles, and clearly had sided with the father who
kidnapped her.
Tikvah sat cross legged pulling at dried grass and listening to
the game. "Concentration..." Albina led the chant. "Are you
ready. If so, let's go. Names of States such as...." This time
the girl knocked out was the one with broad shoulders. She got
caught for duplicating New Jersey. She sat down next to Tikvah
who avoided her companion in misery's face as Albina picked up
the chant again, this time choosing names of cars.
This time when a girl was knocked, out an argument erupted over
whether "Citren" was the name of a car. Corianne, who liked fish
and had arrived with her online banking all set, argued "It's a
French car." "Citroen," replied Albina, a garbled pronunciation
but a car nonetheless. The game resumed. this time with Albina
keeping a sharper ear and eye on the girls still in the running,
which is why she did not notice, the big, blonde Suite Advisor
leading a diverse pack of young girls out of the gym.
"May I bother you," the Suite Advisor began.
"Depends for what." With the game's spell broken, the girls
began to squirm and stretch in unlovely ways.
"My girls would like to play volleyball and we only have eight."
"You can play four on four," Albina chirped.
"That's not really volleyball, you know. We thought there would
be more girls outside, want to come in and play us?"
Albina winced inwardly. "What do you think?" she asked. "Shall
we take a vote." The vote came out a dead heat. "You're going to
owe me one," she told the Suite Advisor, whose name she
remembered as Kadie. That was an executive decision. Volleyball
at least was a game girls could play in highschool, though
Albina's memories of playing it in gym were retched.
"Three rows of three," called out Kadie. Albina did the math,
and she realized her folly for having her girls join the game.
Ugly memories bubbled under the surface as she took a spot in
the center. "Remember," she told her girls. You can touch the
ball but not catch it."
"You can dig it too," Jetta, the girl with broad shoulders
reminded everyone. Jetta's dark brown eyes, gleamed with
delight. "Schadenfreude," thought Albina ruefully. She imagined
her corner of the graduate student work room, far away in
another time, before everything went so sour. Jetta demonstrated
the dig for those who might have forgotten. "Beautiful
technique," Kadie complimented. "Now just remember that when a
ball is coming at you."
Kadie served the volleyball with a hard punch, and arms
stretched, knees bent, and whoops and cheers exploded from
pre-adolescent lungs in a frenzy that made the clapping and
chanting of Concentration kinetic and frenetic. More than once
the ball went past Albina who preferred thought to action.
"Come on and ro-tate. Our team is really great," both Kadie's
and Albina's girls chanted whenver it was time to switch
servers. Albina tried three times to get her ball over the net.
When it was Tikvah's turn to serve, she refused. "Oh no you
don't," Albina cried "You get as many tries as you need, just
like me. If I can do it, you can do it too." Tikvah stared at
the ground.
She got the ball barely over the net on the second try. A short
girl on Kadie's team leaped up and in move of grace and malice,
whacked it back down toward the gym floor on Albina's side of
the net. A small curly haired girl dropped low and gave the ball
a ferocious dig to even things up. The ball popped up like an
errant champagne cork and someone on Kadie's side kept it in
play. The game ended when Kadie's team scored the fifteenth
point. The score was fifteen to twelve, not a tie, but not a
route. Albina was pleasantly surprised.
"Are you tired?" Jupita asked, in a surprisingly good imitation
of adult courtesy and adolescent condescension.
"No," Albina asked, and that was not a lie. At twenty-six, she
was in decent shape. ....
#Post#: 51--------------------------------------------------
Re: Concentration Are You Ready?
DIR By: StoryGod
Date: December 17, 2019, 8:26 am
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And the next game was Mother May I or Suite Advisor May I. This
one Albina did not mind so much since she could make it
challenging to the point of sadism. It really wasn't sadism. Ten
year olds needed it hard to rise to the challenge, albeit a very
silly challenge.
"Mother May I's a baby game," Kadie complained.
"Yeah, but it's fun," Suri spoke up.
Other girls, some of them Kadie's made a chorus of agreement.
Hanging onto a small shred of dignity, Kadie stood nervously on
the sidelines.
"First," Albina began. "Does everyone here know how to butt walk
and crab walk?" Albina saw a few glazed eyes so she demonstrated
a butt walk, sitting down cross legged and moving by shifting
her wait from one butt cheek to the other. Crab walking was
getting down on all fours, in a broken down bridge, and moving
on all fours with your belly in the air. Albina demonstrated
that too. "Touche Jupita thought Albina.
Sixteen girls lined up against the blue and gold mats at the
back of the gym, and the game began. It was not that hard to
think up conditions. Butt walking and crab walking were just two
of them. There was also the log roll, and hopping on one foot.
Since ten year olds were literate, Albina could ask about first
and last letters in first and last names, where the girls were
born, or what they ate for breakfast. "Everybody who ate eggs
this morning can make a log roll eight times." Seeing dignified
ten year olds roll on the gym floor got old fast, but butt
walking was amusing. The winner turned out to be one of Kadie's
girls, a kid who did not yet have her growth spurt and had skin
the color of chocolate milk.
Mother May I put the girls in a good mood that lasted all the
way to the lunch line. "The improv exercises this afternoon with
another Suite Advisor should go well," Albina thought, though it
irritated her that Kadie had not played or called.
"Would you like to eat lunch with us?" Kadie asked. "Her name is
legion," Albina thought ruefully, but she could not find a
graceful way to say "no." Fortunately, Kadie's group were going
to take two buses to Ardsley to go horseback riding. "Blowing
your activity points early," thought Albina, though she said
nothing. She was happy to see her own girls disperse. A couple
of Kadie's girls were stymied by the menus and stations. One
whined there was nothing good to eat. The kid was probably
homesick, but at least even the most homesick girl in Albina's
suite cried in her pillow, and even the pickiest one, found
pizza and/or cold cereal and baked goods.
"Here, we'll pick you out some lunch," Kadie cooed. Albina
winced.
"Tikvah," Albina called to the girl who was drifting toward the
beverage bar. "Why don't you help Kadie and Harmony find lunch."
Tikvah blinked. She could be retched. She was a flight risk, but
a lost soul, she was not. Tikvah took one last look at the
beverage bar and then loped over and intercepted Kadie and
Harmony. Albina joined them. "It's better to let the girls teach
eachother," she explained. "Tikvah's really good at dealing with
the dining hall." Tikvah blinked again. The message sunk into
whatever functioned beneath the bone beneath Kadie's fluffy,
blonde hair. Tikvah and Harmony sauntered off to put lunches
together. The rest of Kadie's girls came to the table fast. She
got up to shepherd them through the lines, all except Harmony
who drifted in properly with a bowl of Coco Krispies and several
energy bars and chocolate milk. She glanced up and down the
table. Tikvah had gone back to Apple Cinnamon Captain Crunch,
grapefruit juice, and oatmeal raisin cookies. Kadie looked
daggers at Albina. Albina thought "Tikvah, I owe you one. There
are times when having a bug up one's posterior, and I don't mean
you Tikvah, is a very good thing."
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