OBACHAN'S SCRIBBLES

The small office I work at in the daytime is located right next to an elementary school. There is a not-so-high concrete fence between the school’s playground and our office, and sometimes a ball kids play with jumps over the fence and falls into the small space between the fence and the office. My boss bought a sweep net a while ago and uses it (or let kids use it) to rescue the ball whenever we hear “Suimasen (Excuse me)” from outside the window.

Yesterday afternoon, we heard the “Suimaseeeeeen” again. Outside the window, two boys were watching us from the other side of the fence. My boss pretended to be a little mad, trying to teach them to be more careful not to let this happen over and over, and said, “See? This happened too many times before and I finally bought this sweep net!” The kids' eyes shone and they went “Wow!” Obviously, for them it was nothing but a cool game to play. : )

The kids tried to pick up the ball with the sweep net, but it wasn’t easy; there was not much space to move the net freely. I helped them by pushing the ball towards the net with a long bamboo ruler, and I knew that my boss and colleague were watching from behind, holding their breath and concentrating on every move of the ball. When the ball finally got in the net and kids successfully brought it up to the top of the fence, everyone was so happy and relieved! After the kids hurried back, leaving “Thank you!” behind, everyone in the office (means, boss, my colleague and me) felt something warm inside. So instead of going back to the calculations and paper work, we went for a tea break.