Let's Play House

 I heard all the voices. Most of them were in my own head: 

"What if it gets broken?"

"How do we keep the kids from climbing on top of it?"

"Who is going to monitor who is inside it?"

"Whose bright idea was this?"

And so on. The focal point for all these questions was the playhouse donated by none other than Habitat for Humanity, part of a program that brings little habitats to the smaller bits of humanity in urban schools. A former teacher and good friend of mine looked us up when he started working with the group as part of his non-retired retirement. The cost to our school? A signature from our principal. 

Well, that and the attendant flood of worry about how we could manage this little wood structure when we are just barely staying ahead of the soccer balls kicked up on the roof. Our head custodian, who has seen and scrubbed her share of graffiti and hauled her share of misbegotten furniture and toys to the dumpster announced that she thought it was a bad idea. 

I had to check myself there. Because my reaction would have been to fall in line and complain if I hadn't known the genesis of the playhouse. I found myself on the defense, pointing out that the price was definitely right for us, and that if we kept our kids away from every opportunity to play like kids, we would be left with the crumbled asphalt on the playground for them to hurl at one another. Instead, I figured it was time to raise our expectations a little, and give them something they could care about as a community. Our house. They would be the ones responsible for it, and if the elements or bad people conspired to ruin it, then the moments we were all able to share in its wonder and joy were bonus moments. 

I thought of the Boogle House I constructed in my own back yard for our son. Scraps of lumber left over from various house improvement or demolition projects, cobbled together in the shape of a starship or frontier fortress or rebel hideout, whatever the imagination said it was that day. I wondered how many of the kids at my school had Boogle Houses of their own in their back yards. How many of them had a yard. I hoped that the new addition to our playground would stand the test of time. However much time that is.