WHY WORKING WITH KIDS ALLOWS YOU TO BECOME THE TERMINATOR WHENEVER YOU DAMN WELL CHOOSE

One of the marvellous assets about working with people under the age of, oh, eighteen is that you can see them in the hallway, and smile at them, and wave at them, and make your finger into a little gun, pointing at their heads while stating flatly in your best Schwarzenegger: "I have come from the future to terminate your existence."

You can then mime shooting them in the face, and they will most likely fall half-way over the stairway railing, managing, in the process, to unleash their own imaginary uzi whose rapid fire bullets strike you in the chest. At which point you can fall to the floor, and they will laugh, and ask if you are alright, and you can stand up, nod, smile and be on your own way to the next class.
And they will think nothing of it. Such goofiness is second nature. Their reaction to your idiotic lunacy will be the same: idiotic lunacy. Kids are hard-wired into avenues of creativity and play that seem like foreign countries I used to visit. They remind me of how I used to think; how I can still think, if I choose. The colours of life can become more vivid, and the gaps between hours richer, fuller, less stolid and adult.

The problem with adults is that we pass each other in the hall, and nod, and smile, and ask how's it going, and pretend to hear the response. We interact without imagination or flair or colour. And our everyday attempts at levity often feel like those old black-and-white movies from the forties that Ted Turner colorized in the eighties-- creepily static and oddly tainted.

Much better to greet somebody you know by pretending to be The Terminator sent from the future to eradicate their existence, only to discover that they, in fact, have turned the tables on you for once and for all, and that you have to fight to maintain your grasp on the here and the now by eluding their invisible arsenal of destruction.

Makes the day go by quicker, is what I'm saying.