Sixteen Sprites On A Rope

[Written yesterday]. This afternoon...in a library in East Vancouver...I witnessed a sight I had never seen before...sixteen
children of kindergarten age...milling around the lobby...with a long rope with attachments at their feet...waiting probably
for one of their teachers to return. At first I wondered whether I was about to be entertained by a library sponsored tug-o-war. When all were finally re-assembled...the penny finally dropped for me. The rope had a series of little nooses attached
to it...and a Jim Jones in Guyana thing...this time without kool aid..flickered across my mind...but was quickly dismissed...
although I was left wondering if the rope with nooses was somehow a metaphor...for how their education and socializing
would unfold. One by one...sometimes with the help of a teacher...a child took hold of his or her noose. At the age when all
of them...no doubt...at home...were clinging to their security blankets...they were...in public...hanging on to their "security
rope"...with a teacher at each end of it...and them in between. The stumbly little chain gang then trouped out of the
library...overcoming a tangle with an obstinate door...and disappeared into the east end streets. Learn something every day
they say...this day I certainly did...leaving me with much to ponder..................Quester.