single frame: Tug of war at Field Day

Tug of war

Tug of war at Field Day
Kodak EasyShare Z730
2008

When my older son was in the fifth grade, I think it was, his school held a Field Day and invited parents to come watch. I took the day off and went with a camera.

That’s my boy there in the orange shirt. That’s such a normal look on his face, when he was doing fun things with groups of kids — happy as a clam to be a part of the crowd! When he was smaller, I’d take him and his younger brother to the park to play. He was a surprising kind of leader at the park — he’d gather all of the other kids who happened to be there and get them to figure out a group activity, which he would then participate in as an equal with everybody else. He didn’t particularly want to lead the group, he just wanted there to be something fun to do with everyone and he could see it would be up to him to organize it!

He grew up to be as introverted as his dad; his favorite place to be is at home. But he still plays in groups, just online in MMOs and D&D games.

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Comments

4 responses to “single frame: Tug of war at Field Day”

  1. J P Avatar

    I always found it fascinating to see the differences in how my kids interacted in a group of peers vs how they acted at home with siblings. Each was the same, but different.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      I didn’t get to see very much of that given my limited parenting time. It was always a giant blessing when I got to go to something like this Field Day.

  2. tcshideler Avatar

    For me, field day was any day they brought the big parachute into the small gym. Or the blow-up planetarium to the library, for that matter.

    I had an elderly (to me) first grade teacher in 1996, a no-nonsense woman who also served as my aunt’s first grade teacher in 1967 or thereabouts and may have really only been about fifty when I had her. My one specific memory of a field day was missing recess the next day after I made a fart joke during a spoon-and-egg race. My grandma had retired from the same elementary school a year earlier and I had hell to pay when the gossip reached my mom. No Nintendo for a week!

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      zOMG A FART JOKE. It was surely the end of civilization as we knew it.

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