El attended Sports Day that was organised by volunteers affiliated to his kindergarten. He was in Yellow Bananas team, and there were K1 to P2 children in his team. He went there first with his father and grandfather. Gar and I then walked over.
I heard that the team leader was quite good at engaging the children. He deliberately counted wrongly, and the children jumped in to correct him.
The first event was to soak a sponge with water, run in a zigzag manner, then do jumping jacks, before squeezing the water into a bottle and then run back to the team. El forgot to do the zigzags and jumping jacks, and he ran straight to the station.
Squeezing water from the sponge into a cup, pouring it into a bottle and then forgetting to take the sponge back during the telematch.
After that, there was a second race. They were supposed to use garbage bags to pass water bombs from the first pair to the last pair. They kept dropping the water bombs, and some of the children went to the team leader to complain about getting their pants wet.
At first, El was paired with an older girl, but she kept dropping the water bomb. The team leader then got El to pair with him. Throughout the entire time, he kept calling El’s name wrongly, and he mixed up some of the children. They should have stuck the names to the chest instead of the back.
El started to get tired while waiting for his turn. By then, his father and grandfather brought Gar to the grandparents’ place, while I stayed with El.
After the two matches, they went to wash their hands and then had some snacks.
He was staring forlornly at the snacks.
The team leader continued to engage them in riddles.
“What did the sea say when somebody said ‘hi’?”
“Nothing, he merely waved.”
“How did the bee go to school?”
“By school buzz.”
Soon, the children were contributing their riddles. El joined in and asked a general knowledge question rather than a riddle.
“What is the largest animal?” he asked.
“Dinosaurs!”
“Elephants!”
“Giraffes!”
Finally, the team leader acted it out before they guessed it was the whale.
They had lots of fun, but when they were asked to go and wash their hands, he continued eating. He then suddenly cried when there were no more nuggets. He refused to join them, and he kept looking around for nuggets. I took him to the adult volunteers, but there were no more nuggets.
In the end, the team went to continue their games, while he grabbed hold of my leg and sobbed. I had to convince him to stop crying and that I would bring him to the nearby shopping mall to buy nuggets for him.
Gosh! What an abrupt end to the sports day.
