When my Waldorf class returned for third grade, I asked them to write a little bit about something great they did on their summer vacation. They all sat down and wrote dull unenthusiastic essays.
After looking over their work with no excitement on my side, I half jokingly suggested that they write about the worst thing that happened to them over the summer. Suddenly they were writing away, deep in concentration, going on and on. When I finally said "enough", the kids were reluctant to stop writing.
I collected the essays and decided that they were so great that we would read them aloud. I still remember several of the stories twenty years later.
N. was a very energetic, athletic boy. He was a switch hitter in baseball and good in every sport. His story was that he went to a big sports store with his mother. She had just a few minutes to pick up something for his sister. He wanted to look at baseball bats. She was reluctant to leave him, but he promised on his life that he wouldn't touch anything, wouldn't move a foot, would just look.
When his mother returned she found an old lady crumbled on top of N. He had 'sort of' picked up a bat. Somehow he had taken a little practice swing to feel that bat. The swing had somehow clipped a lady behind her knees and she had fallen on top of him. Great story.
A.'s story got the most sympathy from the class. She used all their favorite adjectives; 'Disgusting, gross, sick, mortified'. She had had to spend a few weeks with her grandmother which she was happy about. But, apparently the bathroom in her grandmother's summer camp was pretty bad. A. vividly described the mold, the old soap, the dead bugs, the live bugs, the smell of the wash cloths and towels, the science experiments growing in the drains. It was bad enough that it made everyone happy.
Years ago I was in Baltimore visiting a friend. We went to the Museum of War and Peace. I am not sure if that is the right name, but the paintings and sculptures were exclusively those themes. The war art was vivid, dramatic, fabulous, moving in the manner of Picasso's "Guernica". The peace art was blue ponds, white doves, yellow flowers. Nada. Zip. How can we make something we can't imagine? How can we find a way to describe the good, the happy, the beautiful in such a way that it grips us more that the ugly, the painful?
Until that day comes, we can entertain each other with our miseries. Today, comparing notes with my daughter about our trips home from our Costa Rican vacation she actually exclaimed "You win! Your trip was worse than mine." I hadn't realized that we were in a competition. But, of course we were. The Pain Sweepstakes. And, of course I won. I was on a bus for eleven hours. Mas manana.
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