The Manny Tapes

There was a kind of beauty in watching parallel play from about three feet above - it was like watching the world's shortest synchronized swimming team practice on land.  The children would almost crash into each other at any moment, but never did.  They all seemed to have eyes on every point of their heads, and swivels on their feet.   “Oooooh, here we go!” I’d giddily cheer to myself as two kids hurtled obliviously into each other’s flight path, “this one might get some blood! Definitely a nice, long crying jag!”  (While watching Chuck cry was both heartbreaking and embarrassing, there was a certain satisfaction in watching any other kid cry.)   But at the last possible moment a shoulder would dip or a spin would occur, and disaster was avoided with neither child even remotely aware of how close he or she had come to disaster.

The best example was my favorite kid in class other than Chuck, an impossibly cute toddler named Stan.  He was the very definition of roly-poly, with a pile of curly white hair on top of his head, and the second we hit the gym after arts and crafts he’d start running without stopping for the entire thirty minutes.  No slide, no kickballs, no hula hoops for Stan: just sprinting from one end of the gym to the other, thank you very much.  The best part was he never looked where the hell he was going - he’d peel off down the floor with his round head bent all the way back, face to the ceiling and eyes closed like Snoopy dancing the “Snoopy Dance,” but running in a crowded gymnasium instead of harmlessly dancing in place.  Incredibly, he never plowed into another kid, and it wasn’t as if they were dodging him or were even aware of him, since they were in their usual hazy fogs of oblivion as he careened around the gym like a lunatic.  He never tripped over any of the dozens of balls bouncing or hula hoops laying about, he never ran into the big sliding board in the middle of the gym or, what I’d really been hoping for, the wall.  Disappointing, yet amazing to watch as it unfolded.  I became more obsessed with each class, insistent that “this will be the day, dammit!” that his round, curly head would run smack into the concrete wall.  Watching a group of kids in parallel play was a lot like watching puppies in the front window of a pet store, but without the interaction.