Yard Duty

This is a tale about yard duty.  “Yard duty” in itself is a funny term to most of us, as it’s not been a part of our consciousness since we were very young.  I guess it’s like “fruit” to me, which is what my first school called recess; the teachers no doubt reasoning ‘at this time the students shall eat fruit, so we shall call this time “fruit”’.  They didn’t go so far as to rename lunch “sandwich” though, which is disappointing in hindsight.  Anyway, yard duty is funny and I have to do it.

At my school, the primary kids have their recess and lunch at different times to the secondary kids, for obvious reasons.  Usually, as I teach secondary kids I supervise secondary kids, but once, earlier in the year, I was asked to watch over the little ones.  I promptly discovered that there would be much more intervention required than what I was used to.  First, a boy approached me and reported that another student, at whom he pointed “abused me in our language,” and then adjusting the trajectory of his point, “he said I gave her pregnancy”.  I thought come high school such an insult would probably be construed more as praise.  This reminded me of an incident when I was a similar age and someone asked me if I was a virgin; I vehemently replied that I was not.  Anyway, I kept all these thoughts and recollections to myself and, harnessing all my diplomatic powers, tended to the situation.

Not long after, another small human approached me, tugged at my sleeve and pointed to the far corner of the playground.  I looked in the direction of the point and saw laughing, happy children, and then looked down at the tugging pointing one and said, “No thanks,” assuming he wanted me to join in.  But, just like Lassie or Inspector Rex, he tugged again at my sleeve with imploring eyes that said, “Come on stupid human, understand, there is a crisis you must tend to, if only I could speak!” So, I gazed a little more intently into the throng of playing, screaming children and spotted the cause of the little one’s insistent sleeve tugging; a sad child!  Yard Duty Man to the rescue!  So, I made my way to sad child with sleeve tugger close in my wake.  On arrival, I asked sad child what the problem was.  He wiped away his tears and nodded in the direction of a little girl ten metres away who was sat on a wooden bench with the cold hard stare of either a murderer or a child who knows they’ve done wrong.  “What did she do?” I asked.  Sad child abstained from answering, but fortunately sleeve tugger was once again there to help, “She hit him,” he said.  By this stage, there was a throng of about a dozen children standing around to observe the event unfold.  “Did she hit you?”  I asked, for although I trusted sleeve tugger, these were serious accusations that I couldn’t accept on mere hearsay.  I received a nod as confirmation that charges were indeed being pressed.  “OK, I’ll just go and talk to her.”  I walked across to the accused and found I was being accompanied by the onlookers, a group that had by now ballooned to about twenty in number.  She still had her cold hard stare on when I confronted her with the charges; “Did you hit him?” I asked, now pointing myself by means of identification.  She looked to the ground, refusing to answer.  The crowd jeered “Come on!  Tell him!”  I asked again and this time, worn down by my interrogation, her face lost its hardness and she admitted guilt by way of a nod.  I said, “Do you think you should say sorry?”  After a pause and some more jeers from the crowd, she again nodded.  I put my hand on her shoulder and bade her to follow.  The whole affair was very solemn, as if I was leading her to her to the gallows.  We made our way towards sad child, duly accompanied by the group of onlookers, by now a group of well over a thousand.  “Do you have something to say?” I said to the accused.  Again, she stared at the ground.  The crowd goaded her.  Eventually she mumbled an apology and sad child accepted.  Then, a member of the crowd yelled out, “Let’s play family!”  At this point, I thought to myself, “what the fuck?”  The overzealous crowd member continued; she pointed at sad child and said, “You can be the daddy,” then to the accused, “you can be the mummy, I’ll be the daughter, you can be the son,” then, inevitably, she pointed to me and graciously offered me a choice, “who do you want to be?” “I’ll be the dog,” I said, thinking I was being smart and as the dog would not have to become too involved.  Little did I know, where these kids come from they ride dogs.  In a matter of seconds, sad child had become happy child and was jumping on my back for a ride on the pet dog.  I obliged, and ran him around the playground, his laughter deafening my left ear.  As I was completing my first lap, I saw the “family” line up for rides.  I couldn’t deny them their fun, so continued giving rides.  As I was doing so, I tried to reflect back on my “Social and Professional Contexts” university subject to ascertain whether what I was doing was actually legal, however I couldn’t think with all the laughter.  The best I could do was hope that no one saw me.  I gave rides to five or six more children, including a second go for sad-now-happy child, as I thought he deserved a second ride because he was sad.  Then, I feigned a sore back and called an end to my role as a dog.  The students were disappointed yet understanding.  I returned to my sentry post, and the rest of recess, or fruit as I like to think of it, continued relatively uneventfully.