The rope

Last Tuesday I was sitting in my car in the public car park next to one of the primary schools that I teach at. Two mini buses arrived and after some manoeuvrings finally switched off their engines. There were two adults per bus and about 13 children aged around 4 years old, in total.

The tots wandered around aimlessly while the adults looked at a map, and waved their arms vaguely towards the town centre.


One of the adults then went back to one of the buses and came back with a length of blue nylon rope which was joined to a length of green rope. There were knots at regular intervals along the length of the rope.


Now I was parked with a fast flowing river behind me and on my right there was a bridge crossing the river.


Were they going to tie the children together and throw them into the river?


Everyone milled around a bit more, arms were waved and pointed and there was at last a feeling that something might actually happen.


Two adults each took the hand of two children. The remaining 2 adults took one end of the rope each and stretched it to full length, one at each end. Children then deployed themselves between the knots, on alternate sides of the rope. The convoy then moved off with no soundtrack from the Jungle Book. Progress was slow. It was okay for the adult at the back end of the line, they walked forwards. The adult at the front of the line walked backwards, facing the children.


By the time I returned about an hour later, the mini buses had gone, so I can only assume that the pushmepullyou had successfully completed its mission.