If you’ve ever driven on a field trip, or if you’ve ever driven children anywhere at all, you’re probably familiar with the game Sweet and Sour. Actually, maybe you remember playing it yourself. It’s the car game of waving at people driving nearby to see if they’ll wave back--if they wave, they’re sweet; if they don’t, they’re sour. Seems pretty timeless to me.
I remember playing during field trips and carpools myself. Plus, back in my day, the lucky kids got to sit in those backward facing third row station wagon seats, which seem like they were explicitly built for playing (and winning) Sweet and Sour. Theoretically, you keep score as you play and see whether you get more sweet or more sour on your way to a destination. But I don’t remember keeping count. From what I can tell, kids today don’t either.
But, kids today appear to have a few other Sweet and Sour variations. For example, on a recent field trip, I stood on a busy sidewalk in San Francisco with about a dozen students. Just beside the sidewalk was a well-trafficked bike lane. Some students lined up at the edge of the sidewalk and held out a hand to give bikers a high five. Pretty soon all of the students joined, and passing cyclists approached a row of a dozen (hopefully not sticky) kid hands, and many of them played along, taking them up on their high fives. It was like when professional athletes come running onto the court/field through a Soul Train line of fans. And the kids felt it too, because they cheered and hooted and hollered when they got their high fives.
This morning we had another variation of Sweet and Sour. I’ll call it the used-car-lot-wacky-wavy-arm-man-dance version. A few of our young friends welcomed incoming cars with some awesome moves closely resembling said wacky-wavy-men. They jumped around and waved and danced with extra enthusiasm when cars slow-rolled past. They shouted and cheered when the driver waved back. I hope you saw them. Who doesn’t want to start their day that way? And I hope you were Sweet!
-Signing off, Schoolyard Eagle Eye