Pieces of my Playground...

Recesses with my forehead against the concrete wall near my class, and my hands on my head. Time out they would call it. I spent enough of my fifteen minute recesses against this wall, at some point teachers gave up on supervision and attended to better and bigger things. It was in these moments that my classmates would all gather around seeping into the normally-dreaded corner, and filling it with sounds of laughter. Scraping pieces of tanbark against the ground making stars and circles, I’d promise them that tomorrow I’d behave and we’d be in the sandpit instead of on the dark concrete next to the room we just came out of.

Shaka put Laila’s eraser into his mouth during recess and left it wet and slimy on her desk for when she came back. We decided that a decent punishment would be to go to a far off corner of our elementary school playground and dig a hole, deep like a well, fill it up with muddy water, cover the top with sticks and leaves and call him over with some excuse, watch him stand and fall in and then tell him that he should never put a girl's eraser into his mouth again. We never finished it. In fact, before we were able to avenge Laila’s eraser, all our feet had fallen into the mud hold at least once. Our deep avenging powerful well was left at a small dent in the ground.

Lunch times consisted of all of us making a massive circle, one of us standing in the center turning round and round. Cut the cake, cut the cake, lay the pieces nice and straight. From kindergarteners to fifth graders—all forty of us singing in perfect unison. Chasing each other round and round and round the circle till we tired.

I’d sit in the sand pit, and stretch out my hand, and, just as I promised, would let her practice her henna patterns. Only I never had the patience to hold my hand in empty space for much longer than five minutes. There’s too much to attend to in a playground…

…especially when you’re trying to find a way to get into the older grades’ secret clubhouses. Their clubhouse was built under the only tree. Their clubhouse with spare tires (ruins from our inner city surroundings) as walls, spare pieces of wood as tiles, and a nail against a tree for a framed picture.

Kickball, States, Hopscotch, Clap games.

These are my playground memories.

And now I’m twenty, and our schools no longer have playgrounds.

Twenty where the schedule doesn’t carve out a fifteen minute block in your day, commanding you to play, where no one sees a piece of chalk against a blackboard and thinks to grab it and draw out a large hopscotch grid against the cement, where you can no longer dig through the mud with high aspirations of playful revenge.

And yet, I’ve managed to keep my playground. I keep it, with its spare tires, cement, and sand. I keep it all, with its hopscotch, and mud and kickball fields in my head. It’s perfectly intact. It’s quite a fun place only I’m the only one throwing stones against my boxes, and my balls only bounce as they leave my fingertips, and the cement corners are only filled with my laughter.

So here I am extracting my clubhouse from the corners and boxes of my mind, and extending a hand. Asking you to bounce me the ball back. Hold my hand and make a circle. Run around as we call states. Kick the ball when it comes your way. Chase me to the swings. Draw henna on my hand. Spit on my eraser. Keep me out of the secret clubhouse. Send me off to corners.