Kids with Basketballs

One of the highlights this week was watching my grades one and two's recess basketball game. Their small bodies of out scale with the ball, they were emulating the older grades who are passing through a basketball-loving phase now. The school's connection to basketball is fuzzy but I presume it might have something to do with the fact there are two teachers taller than me there, something of a rarity in Japan. I would have loved to get a picture but I was called into ref; why will become clear in a second. Their antics can't be captured in split second frames anyway, it's much more of a moving evolving comedy whose drama needs time to expand into a plot. Their serious faces signaled trouble for the start. Besides the awkwardness seen in their movements as they raced up and down the court, routinely the ball missed its mark making me wince at the prospect of it knocking down a kid like a bowling pin. There was one student, an instigator of sorts, whose style of play slowed the game some what. He would not be talked out of his strategy of simply launching himself at the ball and holding it for dear life. I call him an instigator but he was not wholly to blame. The best defense seemed to be was everyone else piling on and grabbing the basketball as well. This is where I came in, swiftly and with some authority behind my voice, I called for a round of rock-paper-scissors to decide whose ball it was. Rock-paper-scissors: the great peace maker! Another part of the job was picking kids off the floor, quickly giving them a once over and telling them they were all right, then sending them forward again toward the action with a few words of encouragement. I remember the quizzical glances they shot me when they thought they had been wronged. There's not much I could do but say it was alright and I would handle it later Despite some hurt feelings, all players maturely left any drama on the court and when the bell rang walked as friends back to the classroom. In one class today, in this leap year, the students got no end of amusement from a poor kid who's birthday it is today, saying again and again he was two years old.