Kid's Workshop

When I was in college I read “The Rainbow” by DH Lawrence. I know this to be true because I found my copy of it last week and saw that I had underlined passages on the final page, which I did to prove to myself that my eyes had actually passed over the words contained therein. I don’t remember much from the book except a scene where the heroine, Ursula, gets so frustrated by the students that she is teaching that she beats the crap out of one of them. I mention this because I have been thinking of old Ursula in all her infinite wisdom lately since I have been teaching a lot of the children’s workshops. For the most part the kids are great, but there is usually one or two who manage to say something that makes you see with a chilling clarity the bleak hopelessness of the future.

Yet this past week, that wasn’t the case. The kids were all great and precocious in their different way. Sue pointed out how if you were going to make a movie about Kid’s Crew (the name of the kid’s program on the ship) you would have used the kids from this workshop since they all fell into the different archetypes of preteenagers. There was one hyper boy who begged us to let him show us his front handspring, told us how much he loved jumping, and then proceeded to vault the bar in the room much like Luke Duke and the General Lee. A young girl in a flowy blue skirt came up to me and said, “I have a question. Is there going to be a lot of spinning in this workshop? Because I have a very flowy skirt and won’t be able to do any spinning.” I knew that this was eleven year-old girl for “I live to spin,” so I felt a little bad that there wouldn’t be any spinning in our workshop. Later we had the kids play a game called Pet Peeve Rant (which is pretty much what its name implies). Twirly Skirt proved that she snugly fit into the Molly Ringwald princess stereotype by volunteering “People who pretend they have money when they really don’t” as a pet peeve.

But my favorite was Connie. Imagine for a moment what you think an eleven year-old girl named Connie looks like, and you will probably have a good idea of the actual Connie’s appearance. She had frizzy brown hair, apprehensive eyes, and an outfit best described as “Future Medieval Studies Guest Lecturer.” I’m tempted to romanticize the effect our workshop had on Connie, that she somehow blossomed in the forty-five minutes we taught her improv, but the reality was that she simply did a good job. I should also say Connie replaced my previous favorite Kids Crew Members, an eleven year old who somehow managed to pull off looking exactly like Ruth Buzzi and sounding like Kermit the Frog.

During the Q&A most of the kids managed to make most of the questions about themselves. Twirly Skirt raised her hand and said, “I have a comment. I take an acting class,” and Hyper Boy again asked us if we wanted him to do a front handspring. After a few minutes of this we were wondering how we would regain control when Connie saved the day. She raised her hand and shot a nervous glance around before saying, “Um…I have a question? Thank you for coming?” We shot her a grateful look and quickly made our exit.

I mentioned that Sue had said this group of kids would have been the perfect cast for a Kids Crew movie. I imagine this movie would somehow involve the Kids Crew being left behind on a Caribbean Island where they stumble on some quest for pirate’s treasure, a la “The Goonies.” Each step of their quest would be tailored for their special skills, showing them that alone they are weak but together they are invincible. Hyper Boy would have to jump and do front handsprings across a booby trapped floor and Twirly Skirt would have to work up the centripetal force required to unlock a heavily rigged door. Connie would solve the final puzzle that granted access to the treasure trove, which would require her to say things like, “But women didn’t have the right to vote in 1913! It’s a trick question! The answer is Zero!” or “But Gerald Ford wasn’t elected president in a popular election! It’s a trick question! The answer is Zero!” I don’t know necessarily what the questions would be or why a pirate would have questions about women’s suffrage and Gerald Ford in his jerryrigged lair, but just go with me on this one.