. . . because even the third graders are in heat. That, and it's suddenly warm. During lunch recess, I was playing dodgeball with the 三年生 and had to strip down to my T-shirt because of the temperature. One of the girls on my team kept coming over and trying to feel my bra through my shirt. Then, she kept pulling up her tank top and telling me to show my stomach. As for the fifth graders, the boys who clean the English room were roughhousing in a slightly more homoerotic manner than usual, so I suppose that points to spring as well.

Anyway, after school, one of the teachers was telling me that everyone is always happy when I join their students' games at recess, because I tire the kids out. I think this has to be one of my prouder moments-- along with the time when I used a ridiculous amount of statistics to shut down some idiotic A's fan who was trying to heckle Ichiro and an old man behind me told me that I'd been raised right ("Baseball fans are statisticians."). Seriously, I have more energy than elementary school kids.

And since I mentioned baseball: check out the quotes in this article about the opening of spring training camps. Baseball lends itself to that. Moreover, it's a sport without a clock and so provides a respite from one of the harshest aspects of life-- how many of our decisions would change if they had to be made somewhere else on the clock. Sure, baseball has its own temporal organization, but it's an entirely different system.