When I was in fourth grade, I was chosen to be a school crossing guard. I got to attend "Safety School," and I was presented with a coveted orange belt with a shiny silver badge that read SAFETY PATROL. Although I was a bit disappointed that I wasn't named a Lieutenant or a Captain, I still thought I was pretty hot stuff.
Since I was a country bus kid, I had to leave immediately after school. This meant that I had to take one of the lunchtime guard duties. Most kids rebelled at the idea of giving up their recess to stand at a crossing for relatively little action. At least before and after school you could wait on your friends and act all important when they wanted to cross at your corner. At lunchtime, all you could do was mother hen the afternoon Kindergarteners and the few kids whose mothers insisted they go home at noon to eat a proper, hot lunch.
Still, all the "popular" kids had been chosen as crossing guards, and I knew we would all be invited to a roller skating party at Skate World at the end of the year, so I gulped my lunch each day and raced out to my corner to do my civic duty.
Then one day, as I twiddled my thumbs (or, more likely, played with the little clip-on plush koala bears that were all the rage that year...remember those?), a little yellow van pulled up next to me. A man got out and started hauling cartons into the school. Junior Mints. JuJu Bees. animal crackers. Cases and cases of Pepsi.
I gaped and drooled and wondered if Mrs. Dalton's class (she was the easy-peasy third grade teacher who gave parties, like, every day and showed movies every Friday!) was getting yet another class treat. I smiled at the man as he was driving away and he smiled back.
A beautiful friendship was born.
The next week, he came again, only this time, he came bearing gift, a little bag of frosted animal cookies for me. I remember not opening the bag for the longest time, taking it inside to show off to my friends, trying to make them feel jealous that I had the world's best crossing guard assignment, taking it home to show my parents, finally savoring each little cookie.
A week later, I waited anxiously for my new friend. The van pulled up. He smiled and waved. Then, nada. Zip. I smiled my best smile and shouted, "HI!" in my friendliest voice. Nothing.
I was confused but determined not to lose hope. The next week, I greeted him brightly and was rewarded with a little bag of gummy spearmint leaves, the sugar-coated kind. Why do I still remember that detail? I mean, some of this story is clearly revisionist history. I'm not honestly sure if I'd yelled "hi!" or "hello!", but I'd stake my life on the types of treats he gave me. Food has always had an outsized sense of importance in my life. (More about this in an upcoming rambling about my trick-or-treating habits!)
Anyway, for the remainder of the school year, it continued. My delivery man would pull up and I'd wait with baited breath, drooling, wondering whether this was a week that he'd toss me a pellet, perhaps a pack of gum, a Milky Way, once a little bag of peanuts. Only years later, in behavioral psychology class during our Skinnerian torture-the-rats lab, did I realize that he'd put me on the classic variable-interval schedule of reinforcement. Somedays, he'd give a treat, some days nothing. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason behind his offerings and that made my desire skyrocket. I'd get friendlier and cheerier and more desperate. He probably thought I had no friends, this poor girl choosing to give up recess to play crosswalk despot befriending a fortysomething delivery driver.
As the school year wound down, I grew more and more anxious to once and for all find out who was receiving all his deliveries of food. I was still convinced that it was Mrs. Dalton's class. Drawing up all my courage, I asked the man whose treats he was bringing. He smiled and told me that it was all to stock the Teachers' Lounge! I just about keeled over. Not only did they get their own bathroom, but they had weekly deliveries of all sorts of sugary goodness?
You can bet I raced inside that day to tell all my friends what I'd learned, that our teachers spent every noon hour having parties with all kinds of sweets and candy and soda. Unbelievable!
In case anyone's wondering about the path this train of thought took, I started pondering operant conditioning and fixed versus variable reward schedules yesterday while I watched the Boysie play. Right now, his toys definitely work on a fixed schedule of reinforcement. He's got a little stacking toy shaped like an elephant. When he drops a ball into the top of the toy and it yells "YAY!", applauds, and plays a tinkly tune to congratulate him for his cleverness. He's figured out how to bypass the ball-dropping part. He sticks his little hand up the bottom of the toy and trips the little switch over and over just to hear the music. He knows to expect it each and every time and if it doesn't work once or twice, he drops the toy like a hot rock. (For those of you whose brain storage of operant conditioning has been replaced by something more important, like Wiggles song lyrics, extinction of a habit created from a fixed reward schedule happens much more easily than extinction from a variable schedule.) I wonder why toy manufacturers don't make toys that work on a variable schedule? Probably because the kids would get so desperate for rewards that they would press their little fingers into bloody stumps.
Some semi-random thoughts for a Saturday morning!
Nieka
