Question:
If it takes one person three hours (including setting up and cleanup) to paint a 2.5m X 6m changing room, and one person and two fifteen year-old girls three hours to paint the same room, how long does it take one person, two fifteen year-old girls and two fifteen year-old boys to paint it?
Answer:
About six hours, unless the kids take a lunch break after an hour or so and the person can paint like a maniac while they’re gone.
Beta and her friend K. got two boys from Beta’s class to help them paint the women’s changing room at the rowing club. They did it like this:
Beta: Help us paint the changing room.
Boys: Okay. Will there be spiders?
Beta: Maybe. Oh, and come a day early so I’ll be sure to have someone to dance with at the ball. And buy your own tickets.
Boys: Okay. You promise there will be spiders?
The kids were very good to work with. They were just normal kids, especially the boys. Beta and her friend… fifteen is a funny age. Girls are more evolved than boys at that age.
Eventually we catch up. At least I hope so.
I remember being fifteen. It’s a watershed age, when boys are on a threshhold: the boys are more interested in girls than in big cellar spiders, but still feel more comfortable around the spiders.
So a lot of time was spent yesterday with girls, and a grown man, masking stuff off and taping down plastic sheeting and so on while boys poked spiders the size of pie plates and said, “hrhrhrhr”.
They were great, though, all of them. Big help. They were proud of themselves when we finished, as they should be. Looks great.
but have you caught up yet? I was sooo waiting for that denouement.
i taught eighth grade one year, and i still laugh about how one kid had a pin-up calendar in his locker, and the kid next to him had “ALF”, the lovable furry alien. the range of weirdness between age 13 and 17 is not to be underestimated.
however, you could get in trouble for referring to the adult as a “person” and everybody else as “boys” and “girls”. weird they are, but assertive of their humanity also.
I’d change “person” to “man” then, but I’m too lazy. They are all human, and very intelligent, lovely people.
There is a girl in my son’s choir class who left scratch marks on his hand. Another time they were out on the same sledding hill (sledding on hills is a bit rare in Seattle) and she made a snow man on a sled and named it after him and pushed it down the hill.
If that isn’t a sign of a crush, I don’t know what is…