The other day I somehow ended being the best available option for being The Person In Charge Of Games Time for the kids in Awana Club at church.  This is kind of unusual, since I’m at best something like tenth in line.  Somehow everyone else was sick or had car trouble or had to visit a sick relative or something.  Now I am the only man in the church who does not have children, so I guess they were pretty desperate.  So there I am, basically being something like a P.E. teacher for little kids who I have no idea how to control or relate to, and I only know the names of like three of them.  Daniel (who would normally be doing this) told me the kids pretty much knew the rules to all the games, and that I could do dodgeball or relay race.  So I decided dodgeball was really simple so I’d have them play that.  I found out that they don’t normally play dodgeball the way I learned it.  I always played where you divide up into two groups, one group makes a big circle, the other is inside the circle.  Those on the outside of the circle throw the ball at those on the inside, and if you get hit you become part of the circle (but hits above the waist don’t count...  so that they don’t take each others’ heads off).  So we played the way I knew the game.

First up was the older group of kids (as in, third through fifth grade I think).  This didn’t go so bad, because there were two other adults out there, and the kids understood how to play dodgeball after I explained the game.  For the most part they took care of themselves.  After about 25 minutes they went in, and it was time for the younger kids (K-2ish I think?) to come out.  This time, there were no adults to help me out, so I was left alone to try to manage twelve kids.  Well they didn’t take as well to dodgeball.  They didn’t understand the rules, and soon got bored and started running around, basically playing tag.  My efforts to keep them playing dodgeball had little effect, and I don’t know their names and most of them didn’t know me.  I could go on, but the point is that it went pretty badly.  But no one got hurt or anything so I guess it could have gone worse.  After only about 15 minutes of the 20-25 minute game time, I sent the kids back inside for their teachers to deal with. :)

While I was watching these kids, I observed a few behaviors.  One of the kids went off to the side and sat down.  When asked why he wasn’t playing, he said he didn’t get to throw the ball.  I told him he definitely wasn’t going to get the ball if he was sitting off to the side.  Then there were some other groups of kids that just wanted to chase one another.  There were some girls that really just wanted to talk to each other, having no interest in the game.  Then there were the more competitive boys, who actually had an interest in winning the game.  I’ll call it a microcosm of society.

Now that this experience is behind me, hopefully I won’t be in charge of little kids again for quite some time.