Recess Battles: Playing, Fighting, and Storytelling

2. Storytelling and Children’s Battles

27 - 2 STORYTELLINGAND CHILDREN’SBATTLES The children soon realized that they were allowed to say anything in my presence. The fourth-grade boys particularly enjoyed saying curse words and uncensored versions of popular raps into my microphone. Aisha, an expert rope jumper in the generation before Tashi, thought I was a homeless lady—not, she quickly added, because of the way I dressed. In her neighborhood, a woman who is a constant fixture and not getting anyone in trouble is usually just homeless. Some children thought I was some kind of undercover narcotics officer. Others thought I was a news reporter . One thought I was Joey’s mom, because I am white, like he is. One asked if I was from another country after hearing my New York accent. Another batted his eyelashes and asked if I was a new eighth-grader. Like people everywhere, these children used images from their subculture to make sense of my strange role. I explained that I was a teacher and a writer and that I was trying to write down the games children play and the stories they tell because so many grown-ups seem to forget this important knowledge as they get older. The children nodded; this explanation made sense to them, although it still does not make much sense to me. My handheld tape recorder and video camera served as story magnets; all of the tales presented in this chapter were spontaneously recorded and unsolicited. Although they demonstrate individual tellers’ creativity, the 28 Playin’and Fightin’ story elements are of a particular time and place and are stylized in form and content. Too often considered exclusively psychological material, such tales are narratives of danger and bodily power, phantasmagoric and a lot like the children’s neighborhoods and television sets. Ironically, given its prevalence in childhood, children’s spontaneous storytelling has rarely been recorded. The few published collections have focused on early childhood.1 A particular psychological theoretical lens is typically superimposed on the stories, and the tales are used as a frame to illustrate Eriksonian or Piagetian theory. But the stories of the Mill School yard had little to do with industry or identity, although it is possible to make the case that aspects of the creations reflected both. The stories could be analyzed for their increasing complexity, but complex tales exist beside formulaic simple ones. Children’s spontaneous storytelling demonstrates the teller’s cleverness and subtle awareness of the strangeness of his or her environment. There are many collections of older children’s written narratives,2 although a remarkable difference exists between what children of this age are able to write and what they are able to say. The engaging works of Robert Coles and Jonathon Kozol come closest to spontaneity, but fantasy and speech play are subtler than the nonfiction stories that ethnographers have traditionally collected.3 Nonsense allows children to make their own kind of sense, a traditional form of communication that we grown-ups borrow from childhood. These tales, in part sparked by the presence of the microphone, began suddenly, erupted in laughter, and then melted into the mix of game entry and exit. They were recorded on different days, told by different children in very different subcultures. The stories not only are culturally stylized but also have specific historical references; in this sense, they are not individual tales but tales of a cohort. The themes—bodily danger and warning, skill and victory—evolved into collaborative theater pieces where the players played off each other and their audiences. The stories were negotiated performances, teller and audience, text and context. The tellers are Tyron, Joey, Lilly, Kirsten, and Freddy—black, white, working class, middle class, male, and female. In 1991, nine-year-old Tyron knew me as the “recess lady” and could not wait to tell a story into my portable microphone. He usually plays tag or handball, but this day, he just begins: 29 Storytelling and Children’s Battles Tyron: This is Channel 6 News. Recess just starting. If you come new here, you’re goin’to see the greatest stuff about to happen [laughter]. ’Cause, you know what’s happening? (What’s happening?) Tyron: [smiling] I’m about to kill somebody. (Ooh.) Tyron: Wanna know my name? (Yeah.) Tyron: It’s called Fre-ddy. You gotta meet me—at the corner of Pineapple Street. And you...