The Children Had A Better One

I thought this would be a good idea: painting a tire with black tempera paint, then rolling it across table tops on an unfurled sheet. I imagined the kids enjoying it, and they did, just not employing any manner or method close to how I'd planned.

Oh, the kids liked the idea of painting the tire and did a through job of it, going beyond the treads as I'd envisioned to cover every bit of its rubber surface, including the interior concavity.

When it came time to roll it, however, no one wanted to pick it up, so that job fell to me and other adults, who, naturally, fully besmirched ourselves while handling the slippery, awkward tire while the children stood back, laughing, pristine except for the usual touch of pigment on their fingertips. Not only that, but both the tracks we left on the sheet and the action of the tire rolling across the table tops, even when we set up a target to knock over, were unimpressive.

But they loved painting that tire, again and again. And again and again we rolled it; rolling, but only modeling behavior that the kids themselves would apparently never chose to do, sufficiently edified by the results of our adult efforts which we clearly did not "sell" to them as something toward which they might like to aspire. Indeed, children learn from us in more ways than just imitation.

When we finally said we were done rolling that damn tire, they painted it again, one more time, thickly, then turned their attentions to our toy dinosaurs, who proceeded to stomp their prints upon our sheet and elsewhere. And, of course, they painted the palms of their own hands, preferring it seems the more controlled manner of applying paint to skin than the clumsy accidental one that emerged from my stupid tire project.

There's probably a good idea of my own here somewhere, but in this case, and as always, the children had a better one.

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