Limitless
(Piece commissioned for Oh Magazine, published in issue 59. Text shared here with permission.)
A handful of teens have already descended from their neighbourhood of towering communist-era apartment blocks and they wait, looking vaguely anxious, in front of our squat yellow building. The first virus cases have only just reached the Jiu Valley, but last night it was announced that schools will be closing throughout all of Romania. Indefinitely.
Fara Limite—No Limits—is many things: a bouldering gym, a youth climbing team, a literacy programme, and above all, a safe space for kids from this neighbourhood on the margins. One of our kids has described it as the only good thing in his life. And today, we have come to close the doors.
They'll open again—someday—but my stomach tightens because I’m not sure how a community already struggling with illiteracy, alcoholism and domestic abuse will weather this new frontier of “tele-school” and city-wide lockdowns. The boys tersely accept our news as more kids congregate, trying to understand the new rules of this changing world.
One of our teens suddenly declares that we should play popic, and an explosion of warmth ripples through the kids. We move towards the crumbling asphalt field behind the school next door and duck one by one through a bent panel in the tall chain-wire fence. I am a full outsider here—an adult expat in the realm of Romanian youth.
Though the field technically belongs to the school, it’s clear whom its real proprietors are, and within the fences of this co-opted piece of infrastructure these kids are subject to no rules but their own.
One boy divides us into teams of three, another draws lines in the dust, and a third returns from their neighbourhood with two sticks—one long and straight, the other a short nub, carved to a point on both ends. The game begins.
An entire world blossoms from these two sticks, a steady sense of pure pandemonium in my eyes, just barely contained by a great number of inordinately specific rules. I am mainly focused on not getting walloped by the popic, that sharp nugget of wood that’s struck through the air not unlike a baseball, only it’s caught with bare hands. Beyond this there are points to wager, bluffs to challenge, and the long stick is frequently transformed from a bat to a unit of measure, methodically walked along the asphalt.
Some teens coach me when they can, but without slowing their play; there’s too much at stake. They are responsible for everything in this world—rules, expectations, vocabulary—and they take it all as seriously as anything outside the fence. At one point, I watch a boy turn suddenly, grab his left ear with his opposite hand, and throw the popic as hard as he can over his shoulder, with an air of unshakeable gravitas.
My Romanian coworker later tells me that the rules change in relation to the players’ creativity. It is an ever-evolving game, received from one generation and recreated for another. Suddenly I remember that other world where adults scramble for corner-store disinfectant and spread unsettling rumours about a third World War. The world is changing, and even these kids sense the whispering of hardship. But for this moment, on this field, we are caught up in something different, something immediate and corporeal, and it is all that matters. This is, after all, the world of tomorrow, taking root in the cracks and sprouting forth from that unique, relentless offering of children—always taking what’s in front of them and turning it into something more.
A boy cracks the stick at the popic and it soars.