This week, Will visited! He, @douglasawesome, Geva, and somewhat @ryanshollenberger took over the Makerspace to make an arcade-style cabinet for Galactic Nemesis (the game they designed and built last year). There was paint and sawdust and gas masks and silly pictures…They didn’t quite finish, but they’re very close!
The project dislocated the Minecraft+RedCrucible crew to the Red Room, where they had space to also set up cushions for periodic wrestling matches. While I didn’t love seeing them all holed up in the dark Red Room (the Makerspace gets lots of natural light), I did love watching and listening to them balance their hardcore screen time with physical play. We’re still having conversations about managing game rage and taking breaks before we get agitated and lash out at our friends…but I have definitely started thinking about whether moving their gaming into a room with eating and wrestling spaces would help them learn to manage their bodies or whether it would lead them to sink further into their chairs and corners. If it’s still something I’m present to after the break, I’ll probably just ask them.
Other events this week included the continuation and end of Ryan’s illness, the return of Yoni (it felt so good to play at acrobalance again!), making a giant collabora-doodled mandala over the course of three days with the help of @abram @thewitchqueen908 and @failspy, singing and painting with @lillaw, lots of Werewolves, an afterschool trip to the Uncommons where we played a story-telling collaborative game called Machine of Death that I loved, a blog post about video games (still a draft…), @theskycookie’s birthday, MadLibs, and and and the Cantina Band.
Of course, listening to the Cantina Band made me want to swing dance, so I taught @lillaw @failspy and @thewitchqueen908 the basic steps so I could have partners 🙂 They got pretty excited about it, and I think I may have accidentally signed myself up for a new project. Dancing used to make me pretty nervous, as a non-kinesthetic learner with questionable coordination and a strong preference to keep from drawing attention to myself. At a summer program in high school, a friend mentioned that he was teaching a swing dancing class after hours and invited me to get out of my comfort zone. I was super nervous, but I said yes, and a few hours later I was facing my partner, Dan, who was 6′ and 40 and blind. He was delightful to dance with; I’d somewhat describe what my friend modeled as he taught the class, and then the music would come on and Dan would blend what he’d understood from my descriptions with steps he made up to keep us moving with the song. The way he just danced without stressing about whether he was “doing it right” or looked silly relaxed me, and I still think of him a lot when I start fixating on little details too much. After the lesson, a group of us ran outside to practice on the grass, so I learned the technically proper steps in addition to how to follow Dan’s example to actually dance. I practiced that whole summer…then my partners scattered to various colleges and jobs and I forgot most of what I knew.
Today, I started teaching Ryan the rock step, spun Javair for the first time, and started searching for videos of new moves at Lyla’s request. Intending to re-member (heh…put back into my limbs and body) the moves I used to know over the next few days so I can better play teacher until we’re all masters of the basics and can keep learning and playing together. Nervous and excited 🙂
Wishing you daffodil sprouts and thunderstorms this weekend!
abbyoulton.com 
Leave a comment