Map Mystery in The Library, Part the first: How this home-made escape room was played

For the last two summers running, our school has applied for a grant to have our library open during the summer, because our boundaries are such that walking to the public library for most of our kids isn't really practical. I got to be the summer librarian this year (yay!) which was SO fun and also kinda stressful. But mostly fun.

Part of the stress is that I had advertised two different escape rooms, but I didn't have either of them actually figured out all of the way until the Friday before they opened on Tuesday. Since I was only being paid for my time, and not for any materials, I set myself a budget of about $20 for the whole summer, and got to work. I'm pretty sure that I used less than that, but I would have needed a little more if I hadn't been able to use school resources for some of the things I did. Also, I used a reasonable amount of my down-time at work to figure this out before the summer started, which means that if you figured in the cost of my time as well, it would have been WAY over-budget-- but part of the reason I'm blogging about this is so that other people who think this sounds cool can do it without having to invest all that time.

This post will describe the escape room as the kids experienced it. The next post will go into more specifics about how I developed and implemented this escape room, with the hopes that my readers can implement these ideas for themselves if they so desire.

1. You enter the escape room

This is where I admit that I've never done a real escape room, though I have done a couple of escape room board games, which were pretty fun. But even in my ignorance, I am aware of the differences between this and a "real" escape room. For one thing, neither of my scenarios involves actually escaping from anywhere-- though this isn't actually as unusual as you might think.*

Even if it had been practical to provide a sense of being actually locked in a space (which it wasn't) I wouldn't have wanted to do it. For one thing, liability! Sheesh! And for another thing, the kids who come to summer library tend to be in upper elementary school (grades 3-5), so I felt like they would be looking for a less-intense escape room experience. And in fact, I got one third-grader who had gone to a real escape room with some older family members and had NOT enjoyed it, but when he came to ours, it was just right. Huzzah!

My boss, the main librarian, suggested that I create a sense of at least being separated from the rest of the library, though, by using our moveable wall that sometimes gets used to partition the library during testing. This wall folds like an accordion, with both ends being on wheeled platforms. Using the wall was a GREAT idea, and worked like a dream. So, when the children entered the "escape room," they went into a space defined on two sides by bookshelves, and on two other sides by this partition wall. Besides helping the teams feel like they were in an actual room, it also allowed the secrets of the escape room to be NOT discovered by a team until they actually got into the "room" itself.

So. You walk into the escape room, and either the game master explains or else you can read the opening scenario:

You have just put a chicken dinner on to roast when a gang of international thieves comes and steals your mother's necklace. You need to locate the gang's secret hideout, find the necklace, and get home, all before the chicken burns. Good luck!

A more important difference between this room and most "real" escape rooms is that both of our summer library escape rooms were 100% linear-- meaning that the teams in the rooms were NOT solving multiple mysteries at once. I was (and am) aware that having multiple mysteries leading to the solution of one puzzle is the most common way to set up an escape room.**

However, since I was making this up all on my own, and couldn't quite figure out how to make multiple mysteries feed into a larger one in the amount of time I had to plan, I finally decided to be OK with it. The advantage of that approach, which I only noticed after I accepted that I would be using it, is that it's a lot easier for the kids-- which again, since my target audience is maybe the youngest that would possibly be interested in an escape room, might not be as disadvantageous as might first seem likely.

All of that is to say that when a teams walks into the escape room, the first clue is a bunch of papers which have been ripped up and are in a small, pink garbage can. Their first task is to put those pieces of paper back together, like a puzzle (tape was provided for this purpose). I took a picture of the escape room after this step had been completed:

On the backs of these sheets were math equations, which, when the children solved them, revealed four numbers. The team could then correlate these clues with numbers on the fronts of the papers to figure out the combination to the lock on the box with "top secret notes" inside:

Once they opened that, they could read the document inside-- helpfully titled "Notes from the secret meeting of our gang of thieves." These notes set out conditions for where the gang wanted their hideout to be. Luckily, the fronts of the "puzzle" pieces were "fact sheets" for various locations. Once the kids figured out which location fit the requirements, they got to go to the next step: the "blast shield shop."

2. The "blast shield shop" and "secret hideout"

Now the team moved from sitting around the table to an area just in front of an aisle between two shelves. In that aisle, we (actually, not really we-- my awesome assistant, a rising 10th grader from our local high school, did this part 100% himself, for which I was and am deeply thankful) set up a "laser maze" with 1/8 inch, metallic washi tape, thus:

At the end of the maze is a "glitter bomb"-- a jack-in-the-box stuffed with some glitter pom-poms. The team's instructions were to use these pompoms to "explode" the "doors" to the hideout so that they can get out the back way-- but the trick is, they can't get exploded themselves. So, at least one pom-pom has to touch one door, and no pom-poms can touch any team members.

And that's where the "blast shield shop" comes in. The truth is that this particular pom-pom-and-jack-in-the-box combo is not particularly explosive. It's pretty dang easy to just point it in the right direction and not get hit. But THEY don't know that, going in, so we gave them the option to get some protection before they do so. Thus:

I added the requirement for the youngest member of the party to answer the questions because I knew that several of the teams that were interested in this escape room were non-twin sibling teams, which I suspected would mean that the older sibling would be more likely to dominate during the math-equation-solving portion of the game. I turned out to be correct in that assumption, and I was really glad that I added this requirement.

Oh, and what are the blast shields? Pieces of posterboard, left over from a library project. Having to carry them through the laser maze added an enjoyable level of challenge to the whole thing.

I did also bring a dollar-store picker-upper that I already owned, from home. This turned out not to be terribly helpful-- which my trustworthy assistant correctly predicted it wouldn't-- but I pointed out to him that we didn't KNOW that it wouldn't be helpful, and that if it wasn't, it would be an interesting red herring. Which it was.

The papers you see were the two maps we used for the geography questions. More on those in a later post.

3. Find the necklace!

Astute readers will notice that unless a team has located the necklace, they have failed in the mission. The necklace I chose was an INexpensive one from home-- something from a thrift store or yard sale would have worked fine, though.


The part that was a little more expensive/elaborate in this section of the escape room, however, is that I ended up making a hollow book for it. It wasn't monetarily expensive, but it WAS pretty time-expensive. But at least now I own a hollow book, which I think is pretty awesome!!!

And the extra cool part is the fact that the particular section of library books at the end of those shelves just happened to be the 916-917 section, which covers travel guides. :)

This is what it looked like on the shelf:

Yes, I made a cover for the book. Yes, with an accurate call number as if it had been an actual book. Yes, I might have put more effort into this escape room than was strictly necessary.

So, that's it for this week! Hopefully in the next week or two I can post about how playtesting helped me refine this escape room, and suggestions for if someone wanted to copy it in detail. Yes, this is explicit permission: if you want to use this for your own home-made escape room, GO for it.*** I would be so pleased. :D

*I learned this from the following source, quoted below: Nicholson, S .(2015). Peeking behind the locked door: A survey of escape room facilities. White Paper available at http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/erfacwhite.pdf

Many narrative paths listed above do not necessarily make sense with a story element of “you are trapped in a room and must escape.” This means that to fit the escape room name, the designer must add a layer onto the game of the players being trapped in some way and needing to escape. Facilities  were asked in what percentage of the games were players actually needing to escape the room as part  of the narrative. Overall, about 70% of escape room games require players to actually escape the  room as part of the winning condition. This means that 30% of the games in escape room facilities aren’t actually about escaping rooms. For the Asian respondents, however, this percentage was much higher – 96% of games in Asian escape rooms require players to escape a room, while in Australia  and the Americas, only about 60% of escape room games are about escaping a room.

** I only figured out how to articulate what I felt like was wrong with the escape room I had come up with from reading the above-quoted Scott Nicholson paper. Even though in the end, with this round, I decided I was more than OK with the all-the-mysteries-in-a-row format, I feel like knowing how to make it more like a real escape room/more complicated will be very helpful, should I ever decide to try this sort of thing again.

*** Just, you know, be safe. I did my best to make this one as safe as I could, and indeed no one got hurt-- but in particular the size of the pom-poms as compared to the strength of the jack-in-the-box could make it not as safe, so please be careful!

Stuff that's kind of great about being in your forties

My older sister and I are both in our forties now, and we both kind of love it. It isn't that we don't miss our younger, more capable bodies of former years... but there are some advantages to getting older that almost seem to outweigh the disadvantages. Such as:

I know where my emotions are coming from, and it is SO much easier to manage them

I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen to everyone, but both my sis and I have noticed a distinct uptick in our ability to remain calm. Of course some of this is about being able to let go of stress from the outside, but some of it is definitely about knowing ourselves and knowing how to manage ourselves. We know if we're cranky because we're tired, or major life stress is happening, or we just yelled at someone, and we further have this ability to recognize and then do what needs to be done in order to get ourselves out of this emotional trap. Take a nap, take a break, apologize, talk to a friend. All the stuff that has worked our whole lives, but somehow our ability to remember these techniques and actually use them seems to be improving. Neither of us is complaining.

I am much more able to recognize and label crazy or unhelpful behavior, while simultaneously being able to let go of judgment about the person engaging in the behavior

About that second part: I am old enough now that if I'm being honest, I know that I have probably engaged in that exact same crazy/unhelpful behavior in the past, and I also know that it's possible that I will engage in it in the future. :( When describing stressful situations to others, or listening sympathetically to their descriptions of stressful situations, I try to remember to describe the person "causing" the stress as a real human: capable of change and also probably under a lot of stress themselves.

And as to the first part: if a behavior is crazy or unhelpful, I am able to be so much calmer once I recognize it for what it is. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt means not judging their character on the basis of a few behaviors. Having good boundaries means that you recognize when a behavior or situation is causing you problems-- no matter how nice (or "nice") the person behind that behavior is-- and and choosing to take steps to solve those problems. Often that means going to the person and trying to work out a solution. Sometimes it means sucking it up/learning to let go. Occasionally it means removing yourself from the situation until things have changed. I used to only have the "try to let it go" response, but it isn't always the best response! Having the other two in my arsenal has helped me be calmer, happier, more cheerful, and (I think) a better friend.

I moved from being a silver medalist to being a bronze medalist

My brother-in-law was the one who told me about the conclusions mentioned in this article:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/why-bronze-medalists-are-happier-than-silver-winners/

Basically the deal is that if you get a silver medal, you are most likely to be thinking about how if you had done just a little better, you would have gotten gold! But if you are a bronze medalist, you probably recognize the likelihood that if you had done a little worse, you would have not gotten a medal at all.

And this is how this works for me. I spent a lot of time in my twenties and thirties worrying about things which were not happening for me, which I wanted to happen-- some of which were more under my control than others. I wanted at least financial stability, if not success-- but, nada. It would have been nice to have found academic or any other kind of professional success, but again, not so much. And of course, elephant in the room, of course I wanted to be married, which is in some ways pretty far out of my control, but still... no dice.

Now, I will admit that some of my increased happiness in all of these areas is because I have made measurable gains in at least some of them. I have financial stability of a sort, as long as my mother keeps subsidizing my rent. In a couple of years, when I have my student loans finally paid off, I will even have it as a possibility to rent with roommates ("why don't you rent with roommates?" "It's too expensive") instead of being my mother's housemate. Professionally, I am working steadily on my writing, and have accepted that I'm not going to have a "real" profession other than that. And if I get married? It's a bonus! Ladies in their forties who get married for the first time are not even in the same race with those who married at a "normal" time, whatever that time was. It feels splendid to be less worried about it. I am doing things about it, but being able to let go of some of that stress is the just the best.

(If you know a lady in her thirties who is fretting about not being married, do please try not to scold her for it. Or tell her that marriage isn't that great. Or tell her that she should enjoy being single. If you enjoyed being single so much, maybe you should get divorced? Otherwise, stop picking on people who are already clearly stressed out.)

This is the thing. Unless you choose to stop being friends with people, stop reading or watching the news, stop basically participating in the human race, you will be confronted on a regular basis with people who have stuff that you want, but don't have, and you will probably be uncertain about whether or not they deserved those things more than you did. Failing, hard, at professional and financial things for about half of my thirties taught me that there are worse things out there than other, possibly-more-but-possibly-less-worthy-than-me people having things I wish I had. What I really want, and need, and this is backed up by research! is friends and family to confide in, to rejoice with, who trust me with their hard times and whom I can trust with mine. And since I started seeking that, I have found it, and while I will not be ungrateful (I hope!) when or if any of those other lovely cherries-on-top happen, I feel deeply, deeply grateful for what I have and for the chances I have to make my life even better.

To sum up: being in your forties is the BEST. I highly recommend hanging out on the planet until you get here, if you haven't already. :)

What I actually said at the funeral, as best I can remember (the "Life Sketch")

I wrote this the morning after the funeral and then edited a tiny bit in the middle of church, that same day. Underneath my own talk, I also wrote what I remembered of what the bishop and stake president said. (Relevant to their remarks is the fact that they are bishop and stake president in a Polynesian ward and stake in Utah, where the funeral was held.)

**************************

One of Dad's best gifts to me, especially at the end, was that he wanted people to be able to learn from the past, which you can't do if you don't know the bad stuff. I'm not going to focus on the bad stuff today, but if you are interested in learning from it, ask questions, observe, be open.

I look a lot more like my dad than my mom, and my personality is a lot like my Dad's, both for the good stuff and for the bad stuff. I like the scripture in Mormon chapter 9 that says "Condemn me not for my imperfection, neither condemn my father; but give thanks unto God that he has shown unto you our imperfections, that you may know how to do better than we have done."

I was listening to a BYU devotional the other day, and the speaker said that he had tried to give other talks, but that this was the one that he needed to give. And I thought, that has never happened to me, it then I thought, oh, nope, it has. Dad's life sketch. I keep feeling like I should compare him to Jesus Christ.

So. Here goes.

Number one: obscure birth near sheep. [Everyone laughed at this, which I had hoped they would.] I have a work colleague who doesn't think much of Southeast Idaho, and in fact I can almost hear them saying, "Can there any good come out of Southeast Idaho?"

Next, he defied his parents to go to a place of learning. He went to BYU, even though his parents wanted him to attend Idaho State University. He also went to the temple when he was fifteen, and that was where he learned to love landscape architecture. He loved the temple his whole life.

He also sacrificed. When I was two, I needed a medical test which required me to fast for twenty-four hours. Dad thought it was unfair to ask a two-year-old to fast for that long, so he fasted along with me, and prayed that he would feel my hunger. Every time he told that story, he said it was the hardest fast of his life*, but that I acted like I wasn't even hungry. I walked by a candy machine without even noticing it.

This reminds me of the scripture in Alma 13 that says that priesthood holders should be types of Christ.

He also learned as he went along. Dad liked to create, and learned how to take pretty good photographs. Jesus also learned and grew. The scriptures say that he needed not that any man should teach him, but they also say that he grew in wisdom and in stature. I remember the one story about Jesus healing the blind man, and he put the clay in his eyes, and asked if he could see, and when he couldn't yet, he tried something else. So, Jesus didn't know everything at first, and had to learn some things. This means that when someone needs to learn something, that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad, so just keep that in mind. 

They also performed practical miracles. One time, Dad was driving to California and kept having car troubles, and finally gave the car a blessing. When he got to California, my grandfather, his father-in-law, said he shouldn't have made it, and Dad didn't know if he meant he shouldn't have driven in a car that bad, or that it wasn't possible that a car in that state could have driven that far.

He also loved the islands of the sea. He always talked about how much he loved the Polynesian assemblies at BYU, and how they were his favorite assemblies. He especially loved New Zealand, but he never did get to travel there. I was talking to friends about this, and he did get Maori grandchildren, and we figured that this was probably better. [This also got a laugh, which I was pleased about.]

His own father died when Dad was in his early thirties, and he was sad about that for the rest of his life, I believe. When he had his major stroke seven years ago, I believe-- and I am not the only one who believes this-- that he had a choice about whether to stay or to go, and that he chose to come back so that we would have a chance to say goodbye. So he stayed, and suffered, for seven more years, so that we could do that.

Dad was just exactly like Jesus Christ, except in this one thing: Jesus didn't have any of the bad parts, and through Jesus, all of our bad and broken parts can be healed, and mended. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

*******************

 

The bishop mentioned that Dad would talk to anyone. 

The stake president mentioned that when he was a high councilor, he had visited the ward maybe three times, and all three, he ended up talking to Dad. He said that the first time they talked about plants, and that the second time, they talked about how to keep plants alive.

He said that Dad would talk to anyone, old or young, didn't care, and no matter their race. He said that in addition to the qualities I had mentioned, Dad had another Christlike quality, of humility. 

He also said that he had ancestors from Southeast Idaho, and that when the Lord puts someone in a place like that, it is for a reason. He said that the Lord often has a work for them to do, and that this work can take generations to accomplish. 

That made me ponder, and I have most certainly not finished pondering.

 

*For readers not familiar with fasting in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: if an adult (or youth) is physically able, they are supposed to fast once a month. This means that Dad presumably had quite a few as a basis for comparison.

Tiara-wearing experience

I was sitting in my youngest sister's room one day not too long ago-- I often visit her after church, since she lives between me and the church I attend-- and she asked me what I had done for my last birthday. Since my birthday always fell exactly during finals at the university I attended, I have been pretty well trained that having birthday parties is fairly useless, but I did have a lovely time at a friend's house; we made challah* together and she sent envy pics to her brother-in-law with whom she has a friendly rivalry about matters domestic.

My sister looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then said, "I think I should lend you my tiara." Her friends had bought her a tiara for her graduation from college, which she suggested I could wear around the house from time to time. She can't do this so much because she lives with some guys, and they probably wouldn't understand the need for a girl to wear a tiara around the house. She got it out for me and I put it on; she took a picture, which I think I look funny in, but it is also kind of cute, so I don't mind so much.

After that I was going down to a friend's house, and since I was just driving, I decided to wear it that far. Once I got there, I sort of felt like wearing it inside-- but of course that would be silly. But then I saw that a small child was visiting her auntie, my friend's roommate, and I decided that this kind of silly would be my kind of silly, today.

I wasn't really expecting the response I got. The small child's parents immediately said, "Oh! Look! Do you see that a PRINCESS is visiting us? Do you want to say hello to the PRINCESS?" And my first thought was: this is a little odd... but my second thought was, people who wear tiaras in public should be prepared to play along with games like this.

And I would have, but the little girl was just not into it, which I was absolutely fine with; I feel like most kids do better when you don't push them on things like this. Her parents explained that they hadn't been to Disneyworld yet, but that they were planning a visit. Ah-hah!

Then I needed to leave the room for a couple of minutes, and when I came back, the child was ready to talk. She wanted to tell me about a couple of her friends who had needed to go to the doctor, and while her parents thought her choice of topics was hilarious, I felt it was my obligation as a princess to listen to her very seriously, which I did.

And then I had to leave.

But the best part happened when I visited the next week, and we were talking about it, and the auntie-roommate mentioned casually that her niece had cried when I left. I mean, I'm not normally in to making children cry, but if one is going to do so, this is definitely the way that makes me happy.

It kind of makes me wonder where else I should wear a tiara. More on this later, perhaps.

*Challah is Jewish Sabbath bread. Pretty yummy, braided, has eggs and is a bit sweet. They sell it in the stores around here, and after I had bought it a few times I decided I should just start making it myself. I use Epicurious' Chernowitzer Challah recipe, with half the oil, in case anyone is interested.

Lynn Taylor Cox, 5 August 1945 - 16 February 2019

I got the call on Saturday night. I've been with friends ever since (a quiet, empty house is good for some things but not everything ;).

I do miss him so.

The rest of how I am doing

I have a carry-on open in the upstairs hall, and have for about a week, which is "dump-packed"-- meaning, I've dumped the stuff I think I want in it, but haven't fit it into the suitcase yet. I have, finally, started rolling things and putting them in gallon-sized plastic bags and sitting on them as I zip them up. I've started thinking about whether I really want to travel with this or that thing, and trading them out accordingly. What if it gets stolen by the TSA? Do I want to wear red at all, the week that I actually am using the stuff in this suitcase?

My father has been in hospice since October. I think October. Things get a little hazy sometimes. It could have been earlier. Anyway, in October they gave him three weeks to three months. On January 11th, they thought it would be about two weeks. Last Monday they thought it would be about two weeks. Today, they thought it would be any time in the next week. When I told my sister that they need a different bell curve for Dad, she laughed and agreed with me. And as she said last October, it will be a shock no matter when he dies, because he has dodged death so many times.

Other than that great dreadful hanging over me at all times, I'm doing so gloriously well that I can honestly say I'm the best I've been in my life. The decision to not even look for a different job, to put all my extra energy into writing, has been SO freeing, and-- sorry to reuse the word, but it just makes me feel glorious. I feel happier than I ever remember being, about that in particular but also about life in general. This, of course, is interspersed with the sharp pain of finally losing my beloved father. If that sounds like a weird way to live to you, then your instincts are spot-on. On average I'm doing fine, but in this case, the average truly doesn't tell the whole picture. I'm doing wonderful and terrible.

I do cry a lot, but it's good crying, if that makes any sense. It feels clean to me. I figured out over a decade ago that I wanted to treasure every moment I had left with my dad, and I've done that. I have about seven years' worth of phone conversations that I've typed out while talking to him, and that gives me an enormous sense of satisfaction. It isn't that I have absolutely no regrets, and I hope I don't get all full of myself over how well I think I've done, but at the same time, I think that it's OK to feel happy that I have done a small thing for a long time that was not always easy.

Also tempering my sadness is my recognition of the fact that my knowing my dad, him knowing me, him having been around for my childhood, the fact that he likes me and tells me how proud he is of me-- all these things are blessings that put me in a class of blessedness far beyond numerous children and even some adults in the building I work in. I was listening to Matthew 5 the other day, and when I heard, "blessed are they that mourn," I thought to myself: yes, I'm already blessed. Mourning means I have loved and been loved. Not to be able to mourn would be awful.

And I'm writing, and I'm getting more prolific, and feeling more confident in my own competence. I have a couple of wonderful writing partners, who are splendid friends as well.

And speaking of friends, I have more friends-- more people to call and talk to and listen to and feel human with-- than I ever have in my entire life. That makes a huge difference when you have a burden you need help with. And in this, too, I know I am lucky. I can reach out all I want, but having people who are willing to reach back and be true friends really is completely beyond my control, and I know how blessed I am to have all these people who are willing and able to do so.

Anyway. That's how I am. Don't feel too sorry for me. I've had the house to myself for the last month, and it has been absolute heaven. (Mom has been out in Utah, caring for Dad.) And as I was praying about how I could manage my emotions when I am out in Utah for the funeral trip, the answer was knitting. I foresee knitted plushies in my future, unless the yarn for my friend's baby dress arrives in the mail before the time comes for me to fly out.

The pictures I keep promising keep not happening (obvs.), but here is one I did that I liked of the ceiling and upper wall in the chapel where my ward meets on Sundays. The lighting could be better, and honestly the drawing itself could be better, but I still like it. The sunburst, stars, beehives, wheat stalks, whorl between the wheat stalks, and fleur-de-lis (of which there are many more irl than the one sad little one I drew) are all covered in gold leaf. I will not get to stay in this ward forever, so I'm trying to live it up. ;)

And other magical items

Experiencing the wonder that is magical tennis shoes reminds me of a friend who, years ago, acquired some new, beautiful earrings. If I recall correctly, they were diamond studs, but that doesn't really matter that much. The point is, she kept her children in line for an entire day by threatening to take the earrings out if they didn't behave-- so they behaved.

The last time I was in Utah, in October, I went to church with the friend I was staying with (which was heaven-- I connect well with her children and enjoy them very much). In the pew in front of us was a small boy, maybe two or three years old, who was being entertained by a woman who looked maybe a generation older than me. She had a necklace which consisted of a gold chain and a lovely round pendant, and she let the boy examine it to his heart's content, which took most of the meeting.

It reminded me of part of Thomas Moore's Utopia, which I read during my freshman year of college (in translation, to my disappointment-- I hadn't realized that Moore, despite being an Englishman, had written in Latin). In the ideal society described in his book, gold and silver and precious gems are not valued as they were in Moore's time-- basically as money. It wasn't that they were completely valueless-- the adults thought they made fairly decent playthings for small children. You know: shiny, sturdy, just a thing you have laying around, so sure, let the kids play with them.

And of course we haven't quite reached this ideal-- more because electronic forms of money have replaced precious metals than because we are reaching ideal levels of equality-- but seeing this sister just reminded me of that part of Moore's story, and I went up to her afterward to tell her how lovely it was to watch her. She was pleased to hear that, which made me pleased that I had shared.

It is the sort of thing that makes me wonder if I should get more shiny things. I'm still thinking about it.

Fashionable/Magical Tennis Shoes

Man, I am behind in the visuals department. My deepest apologies. My only excuse is that finished is better than perfect, at least in the getting-blog-posts-up department.

So. Where to start. Maybe my childhood? I grew up in an area of the country which is not known for being fashion-forward, and pushing my own family even further back than this regional trend was the fact that we were-- well, I've learned that "poor" can be a loaded while simultaneously vague term, so I will say that we almost always wore hand-me-down clothes.

Occasionally Grandma Tommy would visit, and sew us a few things, and there was that one time when Mom came into some money and took me "school shopping," a concept with which I had been previously unfamiliar. In my clothing-acquisition experience up to that point, you just went through the bags of hand-me-downs as they came in, not paying attention to any particular seasonal schedule, but taking what would fit for yourself and then passing on what didn't. Also, that same year as "school shopping," there was a shop down the street that had Sunday dresses on sale, and Mom got us each one

OK. This is not a pity party. The truth is, it was rather freeing to have a sense that fashion didn't have to matter to us. Things that mattered in my family were books, and school, and music (as in, piano lessons and practice, and singing, and cello lessons and practice for me). If I had to pick, I would definitely go for the family values I grew up with rather than something more usual.

But over time, I realized that my life would be easier if I learned to fit in a little better visually, and so I began to figure out reasons why fashion might be worth paying attention to. The best one I ever came up with was that when you adopt a fashion, you are saying to the people who like that fashion that you are like them.

As time progressed, while I never became (and never aspire to be) a fashion plate, I slowly upped my fashion game to the point that I now blend in, mostly successfully, with my peers who were raised with a more usual sense of what fashion means. The vast majority of my clothes are still pre-loved, though I usually buy them myself at a thrift store (rather than waiting for like-sized friends to clean out their closets), and this fact still doesn't really bother me.

Shoes, on the other hand, are an entirely different matter. Mom read when we were young that you should never put children in used shoes, because they could damage their feet, so our shoes were always bought new, for us. As an adult, I buy not just new shoes but rather nice ones, because I have a back problem which requires a very thick sole between myself and the ground. Also, a year ago fall, I found out that I have bunions, and that the expensive-type shoes I was used to getting for the sake of my back were the sort the doctor recommended for my feet. I guess it's a good thing I like the look :).

There was only one problem with this, however. The favored shoes made a loud klonking noise on the floor, and we have a downstairs neighbor who is rather noise-sensitive. It got to the point that a few months ago, I realized that tight budget notwithstanding, I had to get some new shoes-- ones that would make less noise. Just before Thanksgiving, I made it to the discount shoe store.

"Do you have any tennis shoes with really thick soles?" I asked. I figured that tennis shoes would stay on my feet better, and therefore make less noise than my usual clogs.

"Oh, yes, we have some that are very popular."

Internally, I groaned. I did not want to look like a seventh-grader, or like I was trying to look like a seventh-grader. I LIKE being a grown-up, and I like looking like a grown-up, and blending in with the kids just seemed like a terrible idea to me.

However, after about forty minutes of denial and another fifteen of trying in vain to find anything else that would work, I was defeated: Fashionable Tennis Shoes were the best-fitting, and suited my back-and-bunion needs better than anything else in the store. The part that did not hurt my feelings was that they were about half the usual price of Klonky-But-Grownup shoes.

So I bought them, and I brought them home, but I wouldn't wear them to work yet. What if they needed to be broken in? Or at least, that's what I told myself. But less than a week later, we had a snow day, which gave me a chance to try them out on a two-hour walk. To my mild distress, they caused no problems whatsoever.

So I wore them to school.

You know how if you have a stain on your shirt, or your fly is unzipped, it can be hard for others not to look at you? That's how my feet were for the first, oh, three weeks of the Magical Tennis Shoes. And the comments went something like this:

"Ms. C, I like your shoes."

"Thank you."

"Ms. C, I like your shoes."

"Thank you."

"No, for REAL! I'm not kidding!"

"I know! Thank you!"

Because, how could I not know? I had three different children ask me where I had bought them, one of them twice, within those same first three weeks, besides all of the significant looks and the outright compliments.

And it is these same children, who are extremely trend-aware, who are (some of them) most likely to give me guff if I ask them to do something like: please sit down, or please stop touching another student, or please walk to class because the bell rang four minutes ago and you are the last one in the hall. And when I'm wearing these shoes? They are MUCH more likely to listen. Thus they are magical not just because they make young people listen, but because it is the very young people whom I most need to listen, who listen.

Last summer, when I was visiting family in the Intermountain West, I happened to pack a plaid shirt in my things, and on one particular day when I was visiting a cousin who literally lives in the country, I happened to wear that shirt. I just thought that family might appreciate a nod to their Western sensibility. And by the end of my visit to that particular household, my cousin's wife gave me a goodbye hug-- a real hug, and I was super happy about it, because to me it meant that I had been accepted, and that they knew I accepted them.

I don't know what the shirt meant to my cousin-- not really-- and I am completely sure that I don't know the full cultural implications of my magical tennis shoes. But if these items of clothing help those around me to feel loved and accepted, they will have a place in my wardrobe for a long, long time.

(Yes, pictures soon. I tried to put up a scan of my lunch-tray drawing, but it turned out that it was in the wrong format. Thank you for your patience!)

And another thing: singing

Most of the techniques I've discovered so far for getting kids to do what they are supposed to be doing anyway have to do with seeming cool to them. I'm very wary of this, because even as a seventh-grader, it's a terrible idea to rely on other seventh-graders for your sense of social acceptance, let alone when you're a grownup. Nevertheless, if it works, I'm gonna do it, whether it's drawing or wearing magical tennis shoes (more on this later) or whatev.

My latest, however, is not about being cool at all; it's about being obnoxious. As I told a friend the other day, if you threaten a punishment that's too harsh, then the child has to keep doing the behavior you're trying to get them to stop, because they have to find out whether you would really do it. It becomes about what you are doing, instead of what they are doing. The best punishments are just annoying, like having to line up earlier than your friends because you didn't line up in time yesterday.

OR having an adult sing to you, opera-style, about the thing you are supposed to be doing. "Please take your haaaaands away from him! If I have to walk next to you to get you to stop, that's what I will do!" Man, you have never seen a hallway clear out so fast.

I know I shouldn't over-use it, any more than I should rely on seventh-grader-acceptance, but I also have to say that it's been a while since I have had this much fun at work. *impish grin*