Fun

I spend a lot of time watching kids. I work with them anyway, but at the lake I like to just sit back sometimes and watch the way they do things.



It seems that until a person gets to aged 16 or so their main objective as soon as an adults back is turned is to break what ever they have. However, the closer you look, the more you realise that they're not doing it on purpose, they just seem to have an innate drive to find as many different ways of interacting, for want of a better word, with an object as possible.



Take yesterday for example. Four kids, one about 17 the others 13 maybe 14 were sailing the club's RS Vision around the lake. It was blowing about 8 or 9 mph from the NW so not exactly a hoolie but they all had trap harnesses on. After a while I noticed that they didn't actually have the spinnaker kit with them. The principle intention seemed to be for 3 of them to heel the boat and balance it so that the fourth could swing out as far as possible on the trap then tarzan his or her way back in again. They kept it up for hours.



I was mainly at the lake to help out with our club for disabled sailors. We have a couple of Challenger trimarans and 4 Access dinghies. Access dinghies are strange little boats which have a fuck-off big steel plate for a centreboard, and are actually bath shaped and sized keel boats. They have an unstayed fore mast which holds a jib, and a mainsail. You steer by using a centrally mounted joystick which moves the rudder by a pulley system. A lot of the disabled sailors can find there own way around the lake but the more challenged need someone with them, so me and a few others go out with them and let them have as much control as they want.



Lewis, for example, wants to crash into things with a big a bump as possible, preferably something containing something that will scream. I can usually get away with just ramming the floating pontoons, but if there is a group doing water activities we wait until they've built the obligatory raft and are paddling it across the lake, then go and splash them. They generally splash back to Lewis's delight and when I try to steer away he wrestles me with all his might to get back over to them. I don't think his mum likes him getting too wet, so I insist which sometimes takes a while because he's very strong.



Its difficult to know what Jeff wants as he has almost no language other than to shout "Boot" (apparently he first sailed with a Geordie) as loud as he can and slap his face with both hands with alarming force. But his carers know him really well and they say he loves every minute of it. Keble is blind and basically just needs someone to tell him when he's about to hit something. He likes to have a commentary about what is happening around the lake.



Sometimes when every one's had enough sailing I jump in one of the Access dinghies and just swan around the lake, trying to get a sense of where the wind is coming from by feel alone (they don't have burgees or tell-tales). It was during one of these outings I saw the kids in the Vision. I decided I'd have a muck around as well and started to try and roll tack the Access and, when it heeled, tried to hike it back again by sitting out on the side and hooking my leg around the console. I haven't had so much fun in ages.


How is it we lose the playfulness that all kids have? It doesn't seem to be a natural imperative of age as I know that when I'm working with my 3 and 4 year olds (I'm a nursery teacher) I don't find it difficult at all to drop into their mode of operating. I'm convinced that the mechanism of play is the most efficient and effective way for finding out about the world you live in. Yet, when I'm practising in my Laser I never do the kinds of things I see the youngsters do in a dinghy.

I think that our school systems are so looked into a Socratic, didactic method of teaching, efficient for transmitting facts or skills to a large group of learners, that we've lost sight of what it really means to know something. Those kids on the Vision really know that boat, they really know what it feels like to be on a wire, something they couldn't possibly learn in a classroom or from a coach. Of course classrooms and coaches are necessary and important, but they're not the be all or end all.

Anyone got any ideas for fun things to do in a Laser?