Balcony Reflections

This is what a coworker lovingly called our time on the office balcony overlooking the elementary school that my work building houses. This elementary school has indirectly contributed quite a bit to my time in this building that named itself Genesis. The winning contributor is definitely the noise. During, before, after or no time near recess, shrieks, loud laughs, random bangings , fallings and teachers tryings to re-introduce some level of order overpower any other attempts at white noise . It takes a little getting used to, but strangely somehow eventually becomes the backround that is the only thing heard by on-the-other liners of my phone.
This, however, does not quite excite and mostly annoys me, especially when barriers to long distance communication are high. What does excite me is the bird’s eye balcony view of classes in session with but especially without teachers. It appears to me much like a “Where’s Waldo” school page that I used to read as a child, where each class was a separate window: big enough for the bizarre events of each class to be accentuated, small enough for a synchronizing multitude of organized chaoses to be coalated from afar.

The top left highlights the effects of teacher gone, where a child, taking full advantage of this fact, has decided it is a good idea to play “hot lava”; where the ground is lava, and the desks are safe rocks. He therefore uses his largest stride that might be useful for an unavailable long jump competition to walk from the top of one child’s desk to another, finishing on top of the teacher’s. Below this class and to the right is a classroom benefiting from a teacher’s presence, where most heads seem attempting to sleep and one who can’t is banging against the seat belonging to the child in front of him. Next to this event, is a child running after another, throwing at him a rag of some sort, the origin of which I have yet to learn. As they enter the in session classroom, the recipient of the blow now retaliates, providing an in class commercial. In the next classroom over, an impromptu game of tag entertains idle children, which inevitably explodes into the recess area, pre-recess time. Crawling under and out of the desks is a favorite past time of another to be supervised classroom. Above this game of hide and leap is a class that appears mostly in order, with a whisper here, a jump-out-of-her-seat there and a get-up-to-buy-some-chips over there. When recess does begin, it includes a long line for sugary snacks and juices and a stream of kids running after each other in every which direction without very much of an aim. Five children galactic blue lipped, mouthed and blood sugared come up and say hi.

No wonder these children are contra-control.