6. Lolly Scramble

The superintendent has silver hair and rimless glasses. He has a plastic bucket of paper-wrapped toffees which he dips into with his perfectly manicured hand. He flings huge fistfuls of toffees up into the blue and they rain down like coloured hail. There is tremendous verve and gusto in his flinging. And there is method.

He flings to the left, and the children sweep to the right: rolling, scrambling, fighting, grabbing, snatching. Then he flings to the right, and the children swing to the left, scrambling and snatching with renewed ferocity.

He repeats this pattern a number of times until a few smarter children get wise to it and anticipate the alternation. No sooner do they do this than the superintendent catches them in a double-play and swings to the right, then back to the right, stranding the smart children.

I am one of the smart children, and smart with the humiliation of being outsmarted. The superintendent laughs at his cleverness and flings and laughs.

I thrust my few toffees into my pocket and hate him perfectly. Other toffees skip across the lawn like stones across water. Panting desperate bodies pursue them pecking and clawing.

There are seagulls and there are sparrows. And there are those who prefer to feed seagulls and those who prefer to feed sparrows.

I am a sparrow and I will feed sparrows.