Who writes that music behind the closing titles of films? It must be a special genre of music, which picks up exactly the right vibrations in everyone present – while we stay where we are for those few moments before blowing our noses, reassembling our facades ... deeply stirred ...

Six or seven kids had chosen to watch the movie – and it was one of those films that gave everyone quite a ride. It ended ambiguously – for there had been quite some ups and downs in the story. Before anyone could get up to make for the door, the bows hit the strings of those cellos and the piano added the aching chords which worked their magic on the neural pathways or the emotional susceptibilities – who knows which – and we were all momentarily stayed in our places, whether in our chairs, on cushions or on the floor.

“Hey, man,” said Steve Anderson, “What do you say to that?” Surprising, because he was the 22-year-old sports/recreation student doing his three-month practicum with our program, and he seemed more the blood-and-guts football coach type than the bleeding-heart social commentator. We all looked at him, kids and adults alike.

“Did that grab you too?” he asked, looking at the kids, skilfully filling in that split-second gap between engagement and escape. He was on the floor amongst the most unlikely group. “I don’t know what it is, but I got moved by that story ...” and he somehow had that group talking for half an hour. As I say, surprising, for he was, after all, the hunky sports coach, looking not much older than the rest of them. Secretly I think many of the child and youth workers saw him as something of an inferior ... what kind of course is sports/recreation, anyway? What kind of degree do you need to kick a ball?

*     *     *

The following week I came across more “Anderson-type” stuff. I had been working with Margie. She had for months been involved in a dense adversarial conflict with her beleagured single mother who (I thought) had a tough time of it, providing for her family while fighting off the rage and petulance of her daughter. It was a tight battle of give-and-take, of point-scoring, winning-losing, bargaining and horse-trading – and both mother and daughter had, in the past weeks, used the word “bitch” of the other. It had been hard to lift them out of this toe-to-toe battle which wasn’t getting anyone anywhere.

Out of the blue one evening, as I sat drinking cocoa with Margie after the others had gone to bed, instead of the usual diatribe, she had said: “You know, in the greater scheme of things, my mother shouldn’t have to struggle like she does. She has a grim life, really.”

I nearly choked on my cocoa (oh well, OK, it was coffee, but the powers that be had a thing about coffee for kids at night). What was this new spirit of empathy and understanding for her arch-rival/enemy?

Without wanting to make too much of it (and thus drawing instant denial and recanting of what she had said) I remarked: “That’s a very generous observation, Margie.” ... and waited for her next move. It was surprising.

“Not really, it was just something Steve said the other night.” (What other magic did this young man have up his sleeve??)

“Tell me,” I said.

“We had been playing handball in the gym,” she began. “I hate handball, and all these posh girls’ school games. Give me a soccer ball any time, that I can kick the shit out of ...”

This sounded more like Margie, I thought.

“ ... Well,” she went on, “I had just punched the ball at Miss-pretty-lips-Chantal-god-how-I-hate-that-cow and gave her something to think about – and Steve quietly showed me a way of passing the ball with my fingers to get it past a defender ... quite sneaky, and it fools them every time ... I got quite good at it during the game.”

She showed me the action with a few variations. I listened.

“Well afterwards when we were collecting our stuff and locking up the gym, Steve noticed the almost-full moon, bright and big in the sky – ‘Will you look at that!’ he said. It was only Sandy and me still with him, the others had gone on ahead to the dorm.”

Margie paused and reflected on the experience: “Well, who hasn’t seen the moon, I thought. I mean it’s always up there, isn’t it? But then Steve said how that amazed him, when you can actually see the moon so clearly you realise how big it is, how far away it is, and something about how far away some stars are, and when he looked at it like this he felt like he was on the very edge of the dark world behind him – and on the very edge of this huge other world in front of him ... how small he felt. I sort of understood. It made me think.”

Her whole exchange with Anderson had lasted no more than a minute, yet I could see that it had affected Margie. I had to remind myself that we had been talking about the girl and her mother – and I could now see the connection.

*     *     *

I caught up with Steve the next weekend. We were both on duty on the Saturday afternoon but everyone was out. Perfect opportunity for a sleep, but we weren’t supposed to do that when we were on duty. He was reading on a bench in front of the admin building. I was surprised to see his book was a current thriller ... what had I been expecting – sport, philosophy, earth science? If I have to be honest, by this time I had him down as some sort of preachy-teachy guy, and that he would ultimately turn out to have some proselytising punchline – health fad, religious denomination, save-the-whales ...

I was wrong on all counts. I told him of my interest in his after-movie comments and his encounter with Margie and the moon. What was he on about? I learned a lot from him that day:

“Most people who do sports and recreation courses these days have to think rather wider than ball skills and game strategies,” he explained. “We are aware of the benefits across all developmental areas, and also of the benefits for whole neighbourhoods where there is stuff like gangs and drugs and truancy. Sports also have the advantage of being normative activities rather than specialised or ‘therapeutic’ things.” I was following. “Schools today do less and less sport and activities,” he went on, “just when we think they should be doing more and more. Teachers seem not to want to do ‘extra-mural’ work, and they therefore have fewer opportunities to interact with kids outside of their school subjects. And with more mothers working and more single-parent families, there’s a great need for cross-generation contact, dialogue.”

I was impressed. This was also familiar territory for child and youth care, but we hadn’t formalised it as a course “subject” to this extent. I nodded, encouraging him to go on.

“Of course in traditional sports we have always gone beyond the actual game itself: we work in areas like teamwork, sportsmanship, personal skill development ... and winning/losing gets to be more of a by-product than the main purpose. Having a fun afternoon, working up a sweat – and 99.9% of us aren’t going to get to the Olympics anyway. Maybe we are most happy if kids go on to join a neighbourhood club and get to play social sport, which is not particularly competitive.”

“And not all kids play sport,” I remarked.

“Sure,” he responded. “But we at least have the keys to that door. You guys who work here have keys to other doors.”

“Ultimately all kids are the same?” I asked.

He looked serious. “Our course is aimed specifically at at-risk kids and at-risk neighbourhoods. We’re not working with the future Tigers Woods or Roger Federers of this world. So many kids today get locked into repetitive and unconstructive activities, doing the same things all the time, watching TV, taking the same roles, locked into the same issues, the same gripes, in danger of doing drugs, crime ... I think our main job is widening their range of awareness, of possibilities, of interests, maybe even just widening their range of people.”

“That thing after the movie the other night ...” I prompted.

“Exactly!” he answered excitedly. “I recommended that movie, Mercury Rising it was. It’s an excellent ‘bridge’ movie. It’s a real thriller with good guys and bad guys, lots of action, high-tech stuff, helicopters, gunfights ... you saw it, the same old stuff, everyone enjoyed it – but its also a story about a vulnerable nine-year-old kid who loses his parents and about people who risk their lives for him, and after all the battles and rough stuff it ends with a sensationally small gesture of acceptance and affection ... and that is also worth remembering from such a film.”

I commented: “You did that well, I thought. You seemed to make it OK to talk about those issues alongside the excitement of the movie. And for most of our kids, it’s helpful for them to see the possibility of  ‘happy endings’. I like your phrase about ‘widening their range of awareness’ ... and of course it’s also their range of feelings and words and the ability to think and talk about stuff.”

I didn’t tell him, but I suspected that we child and youth care workers might have been satisfied to “use” the film purely for entertainment – as something to keep the kids busy for an hour-and-a-half! Stephen Anderson succeeded that afternoon in widening my range of thinking, and also my respect for some of the other disciplines out there. In fact I arranged for him to do a couple of sessions with our team training and supervision, and we all got widened. Thank you Coach!

BG