Trust no-one... except the man you marry.

I have arrived at the ballet hall today to find it populated by mad religious people putting teenagers through a tedious bout of trust exercises.

Things like pairing them up (one seeing, one with eyes-closed and hands groping) so that one can yell impatiently at the other “Just go FORWARD already! Alright! So there’s a step there! So what! Just go FORWARD” while the blind victim giggles and spins themself in disbelieving circles saying profound things like “You’re totally going to walk me into a FENCE! Oh my gahhhd, this is so SCARY! I like, can’t see ANYTHING and you’re totally going to KILL me!”

Unfortunately, they’re probably not. I witnessed all the seeing-eye-teens (not to be confused with the thinking-brain-teens) being told “Do not take them ANYWHERE near the road. Just don’t go near the road. Take them (broadly gesticulating arm) THAT way.”
So much of the real mystery (and therefore, trust to be gained) has been excised.
With a sledgehammer. 

Real trust games for teenagers in this day and age should include real things. Like holding out a funny-smelling cigarette and asking “Would I REALLY give you drugs to smoke?” Of course, the desired (trusting) response would depend entirely on the calibre of your friend. Or holding the car door open while saying “Of COURSE I’m alright to drive. I only had one beer, and it was light, and it was HOURS ago.”

The real point of all this is that the people who play these trust games are usually the ones who WON’T drink and drive, or spike their friend’s drink, or set them up with a spliff instead of a clove cigarette. The kids who will – maybe they were never kids long enough to enjoy these games in the first place.

Hmm. I’m a bit worried about myself now. Still, given that I agonise over the nature of my influence on the kids I work with on an almost daily basis, I’m probably safe. Safe-ish. More likely that trust games just give me unpleasant flashbacks to being the new (immensely unpopular) kid in year 7.

I’m so not a team player.

P.S. I love my husband. It's a testimony to his easygoing nature that at ten pm on Friday night I present him with a plastic skeleton (well, skull and two hands) which moves up and down beneath a ghostly veil while suspended from a black tube... and say "Hey! Can you get the sound on this to STOP working?"* The unnerving groans that accompany this are not desired for our purposes** (ballet concert) so I have been presented with this monstrosity and asked "Can Michael disable the sound? So it still goes up and down, just doesn't make any sound?"

*I just realised his instant compliance could be linked to my scariness, which increases exponentially and proportionately to days remaining until concert. Shut up, the lot of you who are nodding out there. I can see you and I know where you all live. Yeah. 


**Because our senior students do plenty of moaning and groaning and DON'T require a motion sensor to get started. If you're reading this, good luck refuting that. Really. You'll need it.

So anyway, I dump this in his lap (right on top of the beloved lappy) and remove myself from the room.

Remember, ten pm on Friday night.

He fiddles, goes and gets a screwdriver, and after about fifteen repetitive moaning descants (by which time I'm ready to set the thing on fire) there is no more. Just a gentle whirring, as the skull bobs up and down and spins gently. And my lovely, clever husband picks up his laptop and parks his skinny butt back on the couch. I wish I had that kind of insane equilibrium.