The boys howl, and I crack the whip

This teddy bear was innocent until the boys transformed him into something evil.

As the toxic smell of spray paint drifts up from the basement and splotches of red paint dry on my hardwood floor, I ask myself, how is it possible that men still rule the world?

For the past seven years, I have coached a group of kids, most of them boys, in Odyssey of the Mind, a creativity/problem-solving program that coaches love to hate.  This year, for the third time, I’m coaching an all-boy team of four seventh graders and a sixth grader.  The boys are developing a skit about a traveler who visits an unknown place which he perceives as a threat to his community; the skit includes a set that moves without direct human power.

I’ve known these boys since they were six or seven years old.  I know them well.  They love PVC pipe, spray paint, and explosions, real or imaginary.  They also love the idea of winning–but only if they don’t have to work too hard.  Instead of “thinking out of the box,” they often struggle to think their way out of a paper bag, mostly because they can’t be bothered.

Odyssey of the Mind has taught me that when I retire, I definitely don’t want to spend my time “working with children.”  These boys often drive me crazy.  They bang hammers on dining room tables.  They leave hot glue guns burning on plastic tarps.  They splatter paint and paper maché mixture all over the floor.  

The purple glitter lumps are rock candy crystals. The yellow lumps are corn cobs. The mess is 100% middle school boy.

The boys have progressed/matured a little bit from last year.  So far, no one has shut my cat in a box and forgotten about him.  Pencil hurling mostly has stopped.  The kid who used to pick up anything dangerous (a two-by-four, a section of pipe) and absent-mindedly swing it around has departed.

Still, I know I can’t leave the boys to their own devices for long, because without supervision, they will take a PVC pipe that I purchased for them and cut into it without taking any measurements, or considering how they will get four cuts from one length.  One will grab a beautiful piece of large cardboard scavenged from a local store for use as a set backdrop, and cut a hole, right in the middle.  They are good at ruining things.

Why cut a readily available smaller piece of cardboard when you can destroy a large piece the team had intended to use as a set backdrop?

As the mother of a mild-mannered only son, I am not used to yelling at kids, or even being stern.  But in March, as we get closer to our tournament, I ask the boys if they want me to crack the whip.  I can crack it or not, I explain, but you guys aren’t winning anything if you don’t stop fooling around.  They always say yes, please, crack away.  They know themselves well.  So the filters come off.

“Stop swinging that knife, NOW.”

“Do you really think the judges want to hear about how you want to kill your brother?”

“WHY are you standing with your dirty feet on the backdrop?”

Odyssey is a Do-It-Yourself program for kids.  The rules prohibit adults from telling the kids what to do and from doing things for them.  However, we can teach them skills (this is HOW you use a drill without putting a hole in your eyeball), and we can ask questions that help them to devise solutions.  Early on these questions fall well within the program guidelines:  “How else could you support the structure?”  “How you could create the illusion of an exploding volcano?”

But by mid-March, my questions are more direct, perhaps bordering on the forbidden “outside assistance.”

“Is that really all you are going to do with that set?”

“Which team do you think is going to earn more points, the team that makes creative costumes, or the team that doesn’t bother with costumes?”

“Do you think these unpainted cardboard boxes look like a castle?”

Behold, the golden statue of the Gummy Bear leader. Even I have to admit that the boys did a pretty good job fashioning him from a plastic bottle, nubs of PVC pipe, and a Pokemon ball.

Right now the pressure is on. Every room in my house is full of backdrops, structures built from PVC pipe, and drying paper maché.  Debris from exploding party poppers litters the floor. These are the times that try coaches’ souls, the times we love to hate.

The boys love this program, which is why I continue to coach.  How often do you see teenaged boys gleefully running around pretending to be Gummy Bears?  Or taking pleasure in transforming a stuffed teddy bear from innocent to evil?  Or building a giant’s lair which they secretly hope they can transform into their own personal lair once the competition is over?

Next Saturday, the kids will compete.  Instead of pulling things apart, they will pull it together to work as a team, and pull off a flawless performance.  I know the outcome will be great.  Even so, we may or may not make it to the State competition, or to the World Finals in Iowa.  The girls will probably rule.

But perhaps not.  The boys have a knack for getting the judges to laugh out loud.  While the girls spend hours working on elaborate costumes for a few bonus points, the boys practice the art of hitting the most points for the least work.  Who wouldn’t want that skill?

Also, seventh grade boys who willingly become Gummy Bears don’t care what other people think.  They’re doing what they want to do.  Other people’s expectations or definitions of “cool” do not concern them.  They please themselves, rather than trying to please others.

Maybe these strengths explain why men still the rule the world.  At least that’s what I tell myself, if only to push away the future image of a slacker son working just enough hours making YouTube videos to pay his cell phone bill and contribute a few bucks in room and board for living in his parents’ basement.

Wait–not the basement.  It’s full of cardboard and PVC pipe.  Besides, the WiFi reception down there is terrible.  And the lair slides so easily into the family room with the wide-screen TV.

P.S. Just to be clear: I don’t wish for me to continue ruling the world, or for women to take over—sharing power between the genders is definitely the goal.  I just wonder how this fact is still possible, given my experience in working with these boys.