Fear of Dinosaurs

So, I have a friend whose young son developed a fear of dinosaurs.  Most children love them, but not 4-year old Jackson as evidenced by his nightmares. So she told him, don’t worry they lived a long, long time ago way before humans were ever on the planet.  You'll never see a dinosaur walking down the street or in the supermarket.  Jackson thought for a bit and asked, how do we know what they look like then? A good question, because scientists are smart, Jackson.  Jackson then developed a fear of crocodiles.  Don’t worry, my friend said, you won't see a crocodile on our street, in the neighborhood or in the supermarket.

True for a suburb of New York.  Just don’t go to Florida.  My father lived on a golf course.  He was playing a round of golf and he kicked a rock out of the way.  It didn’t move, so he kicked it again.  Still didn’t move so this time he gave it a harder kick.  Again this rock was not budging.  He looked down to discover he’d been kicking an alligator.

Suddenly I remembered an incident that happened to a friend.  He lived in a very nice doorman apartment on the Upper West Side.  He had a long day at work and came home. His kitchen was off to the side of his door, he was hungry so he went in and started to prepare dinner.  He went into his living room turned on the light and there right in the center of the floor was a snake. A large snake. He backed out of the room trying not to spook the snake, ran out of the door and out of the building.  He called 911 and the Department of Animal Care and Control arrived to capture the snake.  Probably someone’s pet snake had escaped. 

My friend cleaned his apartment and that was that.  Me, I’d have to move.  I certainly would not be able to stay there that night or any night.

65.5 million years ago dinosaurs went extinct.  An asteroid hit the earth causing an ice age.  Fear of a dinosaur is a little unfounded.  Another asteroid?  That could happen.  And fear of snakes, well, that is quite common.  Just ask Indiana Jones.

Skateboarding on Thin Ice

So, it was a gorgeous sun soaked pre spring day and I took a long walk.  It seemed as if everybody was out and about.  I found myself in Washington Square Park on a bench. The promenade was warm and the trees provided shade.  There was no end to the cast of characters vying for attention, but one stood out.  

     

He had a skateboard and he wanted to show he knew how to use it. He wasn’t in the first blush of youth, or the second or the third.  He made a grand announcement that he would ride over one garbage pail.  Those around me barely paid attention.  Not even when he crashed.

He then made an announcement that he would attempt the very difficult feat of riding over two garbage pails.   Again, he crashed.  He didn’t appear to hurt himself because he would quickly pick himself up and make his next announcement.  Attention Ladies and Gentlemen - this time he would attempt the difficult feat of…. three garbage pails. The crowd around me started paying attention.  And, down he came. 

By his fourth announcement, the person sitting next to me (a stranger) and I were holding onto each other laughing so hard we had tears streaming down our faces.  Once again, the skateboarder didn’t fail to fail.  He scrambled up, and started again.

He didn’t seem to hurt himself.  Drunks and children, perhaps.  Though he never made any of the great leaps, or any leap, I have to admire the fact that he kept trying with bigger and bigger bravado. I do hope, however, that he gives up this form of entertainment.  Ah, the joys of a sunny Sunday.

Wild Girls

So, I coach fourth graders in swimming for an Upper East Side school.  There are 3 classes in the grade and they rotate.  This next class 4A I know from coaching cross country.  They are wild. Big personalities, hilarious, smart and fun and I like them a lot. But wild. With swimming you really need the girls to pay attention, so throughout the day I was anticipating the crazy.

We take a bus to the swimming pool.  The big girls (6th graders) take a bus to the bronx and their bus is always on time, waiting for them down the block.  We wait and wait for our bus that always stops right in front of the school. That day a bus stops, we get on and go. We were on the wrong bus.  The bus driver adjusts quickly and heads to our pool located just 10 blocks away.  My fellow coach on the phone, tells me, “you wouldn’t believe what’s going on.” More on this in a bit.

I’m not paying too much attention because the girls are hilarious.  They want to see Fifty Shades Darker.  Ummm, in about 9 years I say.  Why, they say, is it scary?  You could say that I say.  Are there ghosts?  I laugh.

One of the hardest parts of coaching 9 year old girls  is getting them dressed after swimming.  They move frantically about but somehow all that movement doesn’t seem to involve getting dressed and drying their hair.  The locker room is chaos.   I’m calling out – 7 minutes left, 6, when someone hands me a baby.

A woman with two toddlers and a baby, had entered the locker room and thrusted the baby into my hands. Will you take him? she asks, as she enters the rest room.  Uh, yeah, I say. I continue to move the girls along.  The girls ask the obvious question, “how did you get that baby?” “Someone gave him to me,” I say.  The baby is red faced and screaming so I’m holding him at arms length.  I think, okay, enough screaming baby and hand him off to my fellow coach.  So the woman with the toddlers hands the baby to one woman and retrieves it from another.

We arrive back to school and learn the complete story of the wrong bus.  The swim coach of the 6th graders (whose bus we took) made a big scene.   In front of parents and school administrators.  Screaming - that’s not my bus!  That’s not my bus driver!  The Syrian Ambassador was in residence down the street and the cops needed to keep traffic moving.  Move it, move it, they screamed.  And here’s this coach acting like a maniac because it was the wrong bus.  Well, she got to where she needed to go and so did we.

The girls were great.  The world around them was chaotic but they were great.  All in a day's work.  This week it's a new class.  Stay tuned.