My name is Mr. Halbrook, and I've been teaching for more than 15 years,

long enough to know that kids are kids no matter where you go.

Noisy, rowdy, and inventive in ways that adults forget how to be.

But last fall, I moved north to a smaller district.

I found myself in charge of a class where the children weren't like any I'd taught before.

They weren't bad by any stretch, just different, wary perhaps.

They could scream their lungs out over dodgeball one minute, then fall into eerie silence the next.

It was during one of those silences that I noticed their game.

At first, I thought it was just a variation on tag or some regional playground chant like Duck Duck Goose.

They formed a loose circle,

walking slowly around a chosen child and began chanting. It wasn't a rhyme I recognized, just the cadence of names. All the while, the one in the middle baited, teased, tricked the others into speaking their own name,

and whoever slipped became it.

That much I could follow.

The rules weren't the strange part.

What unsettled me was how serious they treated it.

The game always began the same way.

Voices hushed, steps measured, a kind of nervous reverence.

The playground could be roaring with sounds, and still, when that circle formed, the noise

dimmed as if some unspoken boundary had dropped around them.

And whoever was chosen as it never looked like they were playing.

They didn't laugh or roll their eyes or chase after friends.

They slumped, shoulders heavy, eyes downcast.

...