The summer solstice is a couple of days away and we're still experiencing June-uary weather here in Seattle, but our annual Fremont neighborhood Summer Solstice Parade filled the streets on Saturday as it has for the past 28 years. My family has taken part in the most recent 14 parades and we plan to keep doing it because it's fun! Kicked off by some 1500 cyclists, most wearing little more than body paint, it's our own, homemade art parade, a celebration both of the season and who we are as a community. The parade rules stipulate that there are no recognizable words, logos or signage: if you have something to say, you have to say it through your art. And no motors are allowed (other than wheelchairs) so everything must be human powered.
This year I joined an ensemble called the Rodent and Robot Revolution. Conceived by local artist Balou De la Rosa, our float featured a giant, functional hamster wheel that we took turns walking in along the parade route. We costumed ourselves as various types of rodents and robots, equipping ourselves with chunks of prop cheese and large-scale pet water bottles. The idea, as I interpreted it, was that if you don't watch out, the rat race will turn you into a robot.
Most of what I write here is about children and play, but this parade, while children are certainly included, is really about adults at play. Sadly, outside our play-based preschool bubble, most adults no longer know how to play. I think it's safe to say that the modern adult's number one free time activity is watching TV and that can hardly count as play. A lot of us have hobbies with playful aspects, like collecting or knitting or woodworking, but at their core, those activities are more pastimes than the kind of play we see when we watch children.
It's impossible to talk about play without talking about risk. Much of what we do as adults has been made risk-free, both physically and psychologically, which are key elements of what puts play at the center of children's learning. Our hamster wheel, for instance, was based on an acrobatic device known as a Rohn Wheel, which was set in a wheeled track we bolted to the float. Balou had no idea if it was going to work. In fact, she confessed that up until about a week before the big day she was convinced that she was going to have to cancel the whole thing because it was simply too dangerous. I mean, this is a device that trained acrobats use, mounted on a moving parade float being pushed along a pot-holed city street, and the plan was for a bunch of us amateurs to manage it. Over the last week, at least a dozen people warned us that "someone is going to get hurt on that thing," predicting broken legs and concussions. I myself, after my first crazy attempt, arrived at the build site on the following day prepared to tell Balou that I was opting out, a sentiment that I think was shared by every member of our ensemble at one time or another.
In fact, right up until the parade began, we were telling ourselves that we would only attempt to walk the wheel when the float had come to a complete stop. Balou and the rest of us, although we didn't fully express it to one another, were preparing ourselves for a complete belly flop, both literally and figuratively. And I honestly don't know what I feared the most: a physical injury or the humiliation of a dramatic failure in front of the tens of thousands of people who had turned out to watch us. We were all taking a genuine and entirely "unnecessary" risk. It would have been easier to just sit on the curb and watch the parade go by.
I've been a part of many ensembles over the years and this is the way it always feels. We're doing something we've never done before and will likely not do again. We were all asking ourselves, "Can I do this?" We were all aware that public failure was an option. We all shared the thrill of taking this risk, of asking this question of ourselves, and then going out there and answering it.
I'm happy to report that not only did no one get hurt, but we had someone walking that wheel the entire time, even as the float was in motion. We played, we danced, we cavorted with the audience. I stole a joke from Lily Tomlin, that I told over and over again as we made our way slowly and joyfully through the streets of Fremont: "The trouble with the rat race is that win or lose, you're still a rat!"
We were adults at play, living an afternoon outside our comfort zone, outside the rat race, taking risks and learning about ourselves and our world. This is what children do all day. If we are really going to be life-long learners, this is something we need to know.
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