Boys Will Be Boys

I took Little Squirt and his friend, Nate, out to McDonald’s today. While they played in the Play Land alongside a little girl, I noticed distinct variation between the sexes.

The boys kicked off their shoes at various places in the Play Land. They dropped their coats and left them wherever they landed; Little Squirt's on a pool of spilled chocolate milk. They each grabbed a handful of fries, stuffing them into their pockets, then shimmied up the tubes and ladders playing Superheroes. They wrestled each other, slithered down the slides backwards, and whooped it up all over the Play Land, making fake burping noises.

The Girl, however, took off her coat and handed it politely to her mother. Then she unlaced her shoes one at a time, and placed them neatly together in the proper shoe container bin. She glanced up at the two rascally boys, shook her head, heaved a sigh, then proceeded up the ladder where she lectured them. “Boys, I need to tell you something. Eating up here is not allowed!” she said, as they defied her by shoveling fries into their mouths.

“I’m Spiderman! I will web you!” yelled Little Squirt. “And I’m Batman!” yelled Nate. The Girl declared herself a “Princess” and proceeded to follow them all over the Play Land, sermonizing. She forbade them to yell loudly, warned them not to go up the ladder backwards, and admonished them to be careful not to swing the rope bridge so wildly. She was clearly some undercover McDonald’s employee, sent to police the unbridled savages! I admired her gumption, because the two boys gave her a run for the money. Yet she was relentless in her attempts to govern them. "You're not following the rules!" she kept yelling with frustration.

Later, as I rounded the boys up for the ride back home, Little Squirt said to me, as I zipped up his chocolate milk jacket, “You know what, Mom? Princesses are weird!”