Smart Kids, Mean Kids, and Wormy Kids

It's sort of entertaining, actually, to be able to sit back and watch the kindergartners on the playground. The cliques form and dissolve, the smart kids banding together and enjoying their break in the sunshine, while the mean kids are picking on the little kids and the wormy kids suck up to the teacher, whose inward exasperation is barely concealed.

And all the while, not one of them realizes that there's another world outside the fences of the playground. One day in the spring, they will graduate from kindergarten and move up to first grade, where they're the little kids in a community of kids who are all older and wiser. They'll grow up, slowly but certainly, and look back toward the playground. Back then, life was easier and much less complicated. The smarter ones will assimilate nicely, but they'll still have to deal with the mean kids and the wormy kids. Maybe those little dudes will regret some of their decisions, but more likely they'll just move on to create a bigger playground with bigger kids.

And most of those kids will reach middle age, where they'll still need the social skills they learned on the playground. Many of the mean and wormy kids will not have changed much, except to think they've graduated into the same category as the smart kids. But the smart kids will know the truth.