(originally posted June 4, 2010)

This past week, we had Field Day at the school where I work. Interestingly enough, we teachers did not bother keeping score. You may think it would be difficult to motivate the students without some kind of point system, but when the kids are this young it take very little encouragement to make them run around and act goofy.

When I was in school, I remember that our teachers had a pretty careful formula for field day. Every year, they would divide the school into four teams: Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue teams. These teams would be broken down into five groups. The groups would compete in five events, which usually included tug-of-war, an obstacle course, a relay race, and some random stuff that I don’t remember. At the end of the day, all of the points earned by all of the groups would be counted and the teams with the most points would be announced over the PA system at dismissal time.

The strange thing is (as I recall it) that year after year, my group would win all of our events, but at the end of the day my team would always lose. Either my early memories are unreliable, or else each year my group was awesome and the other four groups weighed us down like an anchor made of anvils.

I’m gonna go ahead and keep on believing it was the second one.

-Marj

(Now go get some exercise.)