Unfair-Chapter 116: Wholesome (Patreon)

Chapter 116: Wholesome.

Monday afternoon, I gathered up my classmates into a loose huddle with me separated and facing them.  Pacing calmly back and forth, I was less a general addressing the troops and more of a tee-ball coach explaining the rules of the game to a bunch of novices.

“Okay folks,” I said. “Here’s the course:  You start by the big oak tree over there. At least one hand has to be on it when I say ‘go’.  Then you have to run to the fence by the sidewalk and touch it. From there you have to go across the balance beam. If you fall off you have to start over and go back to the beginning of the beam.”  

All the other Littles nodded in agreement. Everyone had been soaked to the point where we needed changing immediately after naps.  As a result everyone was pretty sure that their diapers would provide minimal interference via sagging and swelling.  Even those of us who were unpotty trained to the point of being basically living fountains felt they had a decent chance at the balance beam this particular afternoon.

I pointed from one obstacle to the next, laying out the path we’d all take. “From the balance beam you’re going to go straight to the spring ponies and hurdle over them one at a time. Up and over.”

Chaz’s hand shot up. “Those aren’t ponies though.”   A chorus of groans and giggles came in reply before I could answer.

I stopped pacing.

“Fine,” I said. “You climb over the duck, the pig, and the frog.  Happy?”  Chaz nodded appreciatively.  Another wonderful example of me teaching malicious compliance too well. I smiled anyway.  It felt good to be teaching again, even if it was rules to a dumb obstacle course that I was kinda sorta making up on the fly.

The annoying, almost stinging buzz I felt in my brain every time I was on that playground was severely dimmed that Monday afternoon. It wasn’t something that I actively noticed at the time, and only realized in hindsight.  The only other times I felt this unbothered on a playground was when I was massively bothered by something else and I was taking my frustrations out on others.  This was a nice change of pace.

“After you leap over the frog…” I said.  Annie’s hand shot up.  “...and pig, and duck.”  Annie’s hand went down. “After you leap over all three of them- no it doesn’t matter what order you do them in but I’d recommend duck, pig, frog, because you’re still maintaining relative forward momentum.”  A whole slew of hands bobbed up and down with me answering their purposefully inane questions before they could voice them.

Outside the playground’s perimeter I was vaguely aware of other passersby.  Custodians wheeling around cleaning supplies, or children on errands from one class to the next.  The P.E. coach was already starting to pack away the unused balls and bright orange cones rather than waiting for his period to be done. Used to the chaos the chain link normally contained, they all turned their heads and took notice of the curious amount of order and organization we presented.

Beouf and Zoge sat on their bench in the corner and quietly giggled behind their hands, finding the whole thing terribly cute and amusing.  People they thought of as two and under improvising a complex system of rules would seem cute to them. This wasn’t like when I was running a circus or turning tag into warfare. They trusted me enough to not suspect anything.  Beouf was probably feeling nostalgia instead of cognitive dissonance.

“After you leap over all three of those…things,” I repeated myself, “then you go through the crawl tunnel.  Crawl. Run. I don’t care,” I corrected myself before anyone could nitpick. “Just go through the tunnel.  Clear the tunnel and then you circle around to the slide and you climb up the slide ramp first.”

“Clark?” Beouf interrupted. “I’m not sure that’s a safe choice.”

I  turned around and added my voice to the oncoming groans and moans.  She was right of course. It was very possible for one of us to do a faceplant or worse from the top of the red slide.  Even though the top of it was just at the top of our heads, all sorts of things could happen if we were too reckless. One might trip and fall, or twist their ankle.  Ladders weren’t exactly made to catch the back of someone’s heel. That was half the fun. This space was relatively safe, but it wasn’t Gibson proof.

“What if…” I racked my brain to figure out a loophole. “What if Mrs. Zoge spotted us?”

Zoge looked confused. “Spotted?”

“Helped us down when we got to the top,” I translated.  “Hold our hands or just pick us up and set us down safe?”

Zoge didn’t get a chance to reply or react..  “Pleeeeeease, Mommy!” Ivy begged. She shuffled over to the bench and climbed into her mother’s lap.  “Pretty please?”  She made big puppy dog eyes and threw in something in Yamatoan for extra effect.  The Yamatoan cultural equivalent of ‘With sugar on top’.

Zoge slid Ivy off her lap, stood up and stretched out.  “Okay.”  She walked over and stood behind the mass of Littles playing this afternoon’s game.  “I will play, too.”

Beouf looked particularly smug and snickered. “We’re still on the clock, Hana. And they want you.”  I hid my own smile. She’d get hers soon enough. No way was I letting Melony off that easily.

“After that is the teeter totter,” I said.  

“I thought it was a see-saw,”  Sandra-Lynn called out.

It technically wasn’t either in my mind.  “Whatever! The weird U-shaped thing with the gap filled in that two people go up and down on.  When you get to that you gotta go up and down on it three times before you can get off.”  I was going to suggest having to crawl from one end to the other, but if Beouf had worries about using the slide backwards then she’d have a fit about traversing  a teeter totter.  Shame.

“How?” Jesse asked. “It’s a two person ride.”

Shit. He had a point. “Somebody will take turns being the counter balance,” I said. “I’ll do it first.”

That seemed to settle that.  “Once that’s done you have to run aaaaaall the way back around to the teacher bench.  Fastest time wins.  Got it?”

Mandy raised her hand. “What about Chaz?  He’s a crawler.”

I felt myself blush. I’d had an entire weekend and I still couldn’t get the topless picture of Mandy on the changing table out of my head. I’d been avoiding making direct eye contact all day. How did one talk about that and not be a total creep? There wasn’t exactly a good way to tell someone you’d seen them naked and humiliated if they didn’t already do it for a living. Not to mention all the questions you’d have to answer as far as ‘how’.  No way was I going to risk giving my internet access secret away for that.

“It’s cool,” Chaz said. “I can just be like…the official time keeper or something.”  My poor guy.  He was trying to remain optimistic, but it really sucked being physically unable to even play on equipment designed with a toddler in mind.  

Shauna bowed her head and stopped leaning on Sandra-Lynn.  Her posture became more unsteady, as if she’d just had several shots of tequila kick in.  “I’ve been having an easier time crawling too, lately.”  Shauna had been doing ‘very well’ in her physical therapy sessions. I’d bet money that I didn’t have that her parents got her something that rattled and jingled pleasingly at home, too.

“Anyone can choose to crawl or butt scoot” I said on the fly. “If you do, you can scoot on the balance beam, zig-zag your way through the duck, pig, and frog, aaaaaand you don’t have to touch the fence.”  I saw a  look of relief fall over Shauna. Likewise the gears were whirring in Chaz’s demented little brain, fantasizing about competing and how to twist things around. Beouf looked like she was welling up with pride at me for figuring out a compromise.  

“Nice,” Tommy mused.

“BUT,” I quickly added, “if you choose to crawl, you have to crawl or butt scoot the entire time. You can’t just crawl to get out of the harder parts and then start running when you want to.”

“Crap,” Billy cursed under his breath. Too bad for him that he was louder than he thought.

“Billy…” Zoge said. “We do not use those words here.”

Billy looked like he’d been caught stealing diamonds instead of saying a semi-naughty word.  He’d already forgotten that Zoge was right behind us. “Huh? Oh no!  I mean…I think I pooped.  Mrs. B., check me?”

Beouf did not get up from her spot. “I just changed you, Mister. You can wait till we go back inside and get ready for the buses.”  She wasn’t buying it, but she wasn’t going to argue.

“Any questions?” I asked.

Ivy raised her hand. Nobody groaned, but many eyes were rolled.  “What about Mrs. Beouf? Doesn’t she get to play, too?”

Oh Ivy. Ivy, Ivy, Ivy.  I was loving this lifelong mindfucked mini Yamatoan more and more.  Couldn’t have done a better set up if I’d told someone to feed me the line. “She does!” I beamed.

Beouf’s body posture went into alert mode. “I do?!”

“Yeah!” I said. “This isn’t just a time trial. It’s elimination! Everybody gets a twenty second head start. Thirty for crawlers.  After that Mrs. B starts running the course too!  If she catches up to you and grabs you, you’re out!”  A beat later I remembered some of my own rules.  “The teeter totter is safe,” I said. “If you get that far, she has to do three up-downs on it too before she can chase you back to the bench.”

“What?!” Beouf practically clucked from her seat. “You’re telling me I have to run this obstacle course again and again?!”

“Not really,” I said. “If you catch someone early, it’s over and you win that round. Then the next person goes.”

Animatedly, she pointed to the concrete tube, bouncing up and down. “I can barely fit in there!”

“Yeah,” I countered, “but your legs are longer. You’re faster. You can literally step over the animals just by picking your knees up.”  The other nine Littles all turned into bobble heads and a general mumbling of ‘yeah’ bubbled up and twittered all around us.

“Oh come on, guys,” Beouf whined. She threw her head back, splayed her legs out and lightly stomped her feet like a broken marionette. “It’s the end of the day! I’m tiiiiired.”

She was fighting this, but not really.  This wasn’t an I.E.P. meeting. The outcome was openly pre-determined.  I was going to win and everyone knew it  “It’s the end of the day for us, too.” I said. “We’re not tired.”

Mel’s head whipped up and her voice screeched up an octave. “You all just got up from your naps! Where’s my nap?!”

“I thought you were supposed to be a Grown-Up,” I teased. “Grown-Ups don’t need naps.”

“Trust me,” she said. “Grown-Ups need naps.”

The murmured chorus of agreements turned into louder and louder pleas to play along.

“Come on, Mrs. B!”  

“Pleeeease Mrs. Beouf!”

“Pretty please!”

“I bet you can’t beat me!’

“Please!”

“Yeah, you won’t catch me!”

Melony considered herself the consummate professional and as close to an expert on Maturosis without getting some kind of doctorat as one could get. She was still an Amazon, though.  It was the end of the day and she still had a bunch of babied Littles in their diapers and dresses and overalls and rompers actively begging her to just play with them like she was the coolest person in the world.  This was pure ecstasy for her. For once, we were playing her and she didn’t care.

I never asked her why she got into teaching Littles, but if I had to hazard a guess, it would very likely be because she wanted moments like this. Also, what teacher doesn’t want to be loved by their kids?

“Why me?” she said, keeping up the act. “Why not Mrs. Zoge? I’ll help with the slide.”

“Mrs. Zoge is wearing a skirt,” I replied as if it were obvious. “You’re in jeans. It makes more sense for you to chase us.”

Gently, Zoge used Melony’s own words against her.  “We’re still on the clock, Mrs. Beouf. And they want you.”

A silver bullet loaded itself up in my brain and out of nowhere I fired it.  “Just think of it as our version of Dancersize!”

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!”  

Chaz put his hands on top of his head and almost dislodged his jaw.  Billy was doing laps around the group yelling ‘What?!”

My mentor stood up and tossed her hands to the sky. “Fiiiiine!  I guess I’ll play.”  A second round of cheers erupted, and Beouf absolutely failed at hiding her grin. Then she made the biggest misstep.  “If one of you crawls, does that mean I have to crawl too?”

“YES!!!” We all shouted in unison.  I hadn’t even thought of that.  Beouf had doomed herself by speaking up.

“What?! Noooooooo!”  Oh she was loving this. I made a mental note to rub it in her face when we had our coffee later.

I rushed over to her and grabbed her by the hand. “Yup. Too bad. So sad. Them’s the rules. Now let’s play!”

And we did. We cheered and shouted and kept time, running the course again and again and again right up until the very last minute. I don’t remember who, if anyone, ‘won’, but what stood out the most to me, is that I wasn’t actively plotting anything just then.

Yes, this was technically the same thing I was doing in shorter bursts at the Community Center during Little Voices meetings.  Doing similar activities here would only provide extra cover for my eventual escape plan.  Make it seem less obvious what I was up to. Make the different play games just a ‘quirk’.  

Observing Melony chasing after everyone could potentially provide some kind of baseline estimate of Amazonian capabilities. I should plan an escape route that involved potential pursuers having to bend down to catch me.  Keep low.  Make tight spaces my friend. She also wasn’t nearly as fast on the balance beam as I’d anticipated. The extra cardio and exercise gave me practice at avoiding the big people.

I did think of all of that, after the fact.  But not then and there in the moment. That afternoon’s nonsense was nothing more than me being bored and not wanting to spend half an hour to forty five minutes meandering about that mulch covered prison yard.   I wanted to talk and build something, even if it was just rules to a pointless made up game.  I wanted to feel like I was doing something; like I was teaching.

And most importantly, I just wanted to have a day where we weren’t at each other’s throats- Littles and Amazons; Mindfucked Littles and Littles who had their adulthood still somewhat intact- where we didn’t feel exactly like enemies.  Or traitors.  Or losers.

Just once, I told myself, just once I just wanted to play.  Nothing else. No hidden agenda. No truly cynical or manipulative thoughts.

I liked it a lot.