K ids say the darndest things. "How old are you, 40?" one asked me not too long ago. The kid was 8 years old, and she obviously needed a pair of glasses, or some sort of medication, such as valium.
I say this because she was jumping up and down, making pigeon-like noises and shoving her classmates all at the same time. And she thought I was old enough to be her father.
Teaching gymnastics classes this summer has been my worst decision since the day I decided "poor columnist" sounded more appealing than "rich brain surgeon."
Right now I'm interning at a large newspaper that pays me just enough to put gas in my car to drive over there. If I'm lucky, I'll have enough to get home at the end of the week.
Unfortunately, my extreme poverty has forced me to become a gymnastics instructor. This position pays slightly more than "poor columnist" does, but at least I can buy food now.
My Saturdays now are devoted to turning out the next Shannon Miller or Dominique Dawes. Most of the kids, however, don't want to be Shannon. They want to be Britney Spears or Enrique Inglesias.
This is a problem when you are trying to teach a group of kids who think you're training them to become the next pop sensations. Parents, being parents, love to come up to me after class and ask how their child is doing.
Usually I'll say something like "I'm very impressed with your child's progress today," which actually means "Dude, tell little Johnny he's never going to be a diva!"
The younger children aren't as obsessed with Enrique or Britney. Instead, they concentrate on things like who's next in line and whether or not they're allowed to go to the bathroom. The rest of the time they run around in circles and try to flick boogers at each other.
Unfortunately, the "official staff rules" say we're never allowed to threaten the kids. But I believe a small threat here and there could be useful. For example: "Suzie, if you don't behave, you'll never ever be like Britney. You'll be condemned to a horrible life of mediocrity."
Something like this should be more than enough to grab the child's attention. But as county-employed instructors, we are limited to using "time outs" for discipline. But in kidspeak, a time out is a license to run around the gymnasium and flick more boogers.
This starts a nasty chain reaction that quickly grows out of control. Soon every kid is running amok and hurling small projectiles all over the place.
Another problem is that classes are only 40 minutes long. This is approximately enough time to form the children into a single-file line. By the time you line the kids up, it's already time for them to go home.
The good thing about the short classes is that the instructors get a 20-minute break before the next batch of kids comes in. That's the only difference between teaching gymnastics to toddlers and running a full-time day care.
Oh yeah, and there's something else that's different. Sometimes we actually have to demonstrate a gymnastics skill, like a cartwheel or a quadruple-twisting triple back flip.
While the kids almost always ignore us, their parents watch very carefully. They want to find out if we are competent. But we are the opposite of competent. If any of us attempted either of the moves listed above, especially the cartwheel, we'd probably end up in an intensive care unit for several weeks.
But we have to show our competence somehow. This involves piling up a bunch of mats and catching the kids when they fall. This is a win-win situation. Even though the kids have no idea what they're doing, we can look professional by catching them in the air. If a kid is just too heavy, we let her crash on the mat and loudly refer to it as "safety awareness."
The students never question us because they actually like falling flat on their faces. This is probably the most fun they'll have all day, aside from seeing who can drink the most water from the fountain.
Sadly, my Saturdays now consist of babysitting 5 year olds while they work off energy from breakfasts of pancakes and Frosted Lucky Charms. When I'm actually 40 and I have a 5 year old son, I'm not going to sign him up for gymnastics classes. I know better than that. He's going to be a rock star.
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