Hopscotch
How can anyone hurt a child?
On a walk to the post office I see a quarter mile long hopscotch.
The wobbly lines and drifting squares make me think it’s the handiwork of a 5th grader, give or take. I can’t get over how much time it took. How they must’ve been on the ground for hours drawing it.
I remember when I was ten, crafting my classmate’s names in bubble letters in exchange for a carton of chocolate milk. Soon, I had more milk than I needed and realized it wasn’t about the milk anyway. That same year our teacher made us cast a pretend vote for the general election. I was confused because there was no information provided about the candidates, Al Gore and George Bush, except for their parties. How was I supposed to know who to vote for if I didn’t know who they were or what they believed? When I asked the kid next to me why he chose Bush he said because his parents liked him.
That was the same year my friends crowd-sourced a note telling me I needed be more involved as a member of the group, or else I’d be excommunicated. I don’t know why I’m telling you this other than these, alongside many happy ones, are some of the memories I have of 5th grade. A time when adult life started to bleed into childhood. I’m actually so lucky that these are my memories.
The truth is, a lot of the time, I hate being an adult. I dislike the seriousness of it, the feigned sense of order that we all know is but moments from unravelling. I dislike the way we say predictable things to each other, how we become greedy and isolated, how we numb our feelings, how we aren’t allowed to scream.
I hate how adults stop drawing hopscotches on the ground and I hate how so many of them want to look like children more than they want to dream like them.
I hate that the adults in charge refuse to do the right thing and are joyless and complicit and evil and live as if they don’t believe they will die and don’t believe that what they do with their lives will endure consequences.
I’m crying looking at the hopscotch because how can something like this exist alongside something like that? How can anyone hurt a child?
Even more confusing is the thought that every adult was once a child, and how divorced from that part of yourself you must be to do anything but love them.
A quarter mile long hopscotch. Pretty incredible. Some kids don’t give up.
It will take more than a day’s rain to wash away that kind of youthful work.
Oh this was lovely Olivia. What I like about your writing is that it carries the lightness of wind, but the themes are heavy like boulders. And when you combine it all, reading this piece felt more like a wind gust than a rock slide. In addition to the other absursdities of adulthood you mention the biggest one is that adults inherently believe in the rightgeousness of their actions; that’s why “childish” has a negative connotation. But as the world continues proving again and again, we’ve probably got it all backwards.
I hate that looking at hopscotch triggers a collective grief. I hate that while hanging my toddler’s school drawings on the fridge today i was heartbroken because my mind wandered to all the kids who don’t get to be in school drawing right now. This was beautiful, and heartbreaking.