It's a warm spring afternoon in rural Georgia, and the clan has gathered for young Laurana's birthday. The back yard is decked out in neon pink--pink streamers, pink balloons, pink gift wrap, pink party hats, pink icing on the cake... Even Reese Witherspoon would be jealous. In Laurana's family, birthdays are county-wide events. Several friends from school have been joined by aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, second-cousins, cousins-once-removed, and a few scattered relatives of undefined relationship who continue to qualify as "family" purely on the merit of showing up on a dependable basis. "When are the games?" someone asks. It sounds like an innocent question, and no one would later remember who started all the trouble. So many of life's comical disasters begin in the same way, with one simple wrong turn. Due to the nature of the guest list, the children attending the party range in age from little Sally--a mere four years old--up to twelve-year-old Turner, who is dutifully turning a blind eye to the Barbie-style decorations. With twenty children to organize and such a wide range of ages, the adults break into an animated discussion on the merits of various party games. "We have Twister," the host mother suggests. "For twenty kids?" The gallery echoes the protest in polite murmurs. "What about hide and seek?" "No, no," someone else interjects. "I want these kids where we can see them." "Well what then?" The committee finally agrees on musical chairs, but the kids don't know the game. Twenty chairs are hunted down and set up on the deck while the rest of the adults explain the rules. "We start out with nineteen chairs..." "But there are twenty of us!" "Yes, that's right, one person doesn't get a chair. We play music and you walk around the chairs, and when the music stops everyone runs to get a chair. Whoever doesn't get a chair is out, and we keep going like that. The last person left wins the game." The kids look dubious, but they agree to give it a try. The music plays, the music stops, and four-year-old Sally ends up standing alone. She looks around for help, confused and a little nervous, trying to figure out what to do. Her cousin Sue-Ann sees her distress and calls out cheerfully, "It's okay, Sally! You can share my chair with me!" But that's not how the game works. The parents jump in and pull Sally away, her arms reaching out pitifully to Sue-Ann and the others. As she is carted off, her face crumples into tears. A few of the parents protest, but the "voice of reason" prevails. "That's not how the game works," someone explains, and someone else adds, "She has to learn sometime. You have to play by the rules." Sally's mother tries to comfort her as another chair is removed from the deck and the next round begins. But before the music stops, Sue-Ann is already standing by Sally, reaching out to her young cousin. "I don't want to play anymore," she says. "Someone else can have my chair." After a few grumbles, another chair is removed and the round starts again, but the game quickly falls apart. Several children want to leave to play with Sally and Sue-Ann. The remaining kids saw what happened to Sally and begin to improvise. They learn quickly that the adults will start the round over again if they can't decide which of two kids actually won the chair, so the children start working together to share the left-over seat fifty-fifty, splitting it right down the middle. Giving up in frustration, the adults play their own game to show the kids how it's done. When the winner is declared, everyone cheers, hoping the children will catch their enthusiasm. The grown-ups start a new game for the kids, but to no avail. The game breaks down again, and the children all end up in "soccer practice" together on the lawn. What the parents didn't understand is that "musical chairs" has a fundamental flaw as a children's game. It is human nature to want to be part of "the group," and musical chairs is all about breaking the group down. Sally wasn't crying because she lost. She was crying because she was being forcibly separated from the other kids. The adults didn't get it, but the kids did. Watching those kids steadfastly refuse to play their parents' game, I felt that I was witnessing an act of profound human perfection. How much of our world would shift overnight, I wondered, if we all suddenly insisted on banding together? On taking care of each other. All of us. What if it was simply unacceptable to let anyone slip through the cracks of society? You know what I honestly think? I think heaven on earth isn't just a pipe dream. I think it would really be that simple. |
