The Girl Club

Yesterday I was getting my daughter ready for bed when I asked her how school went. She told me that it went "fine", in the usually uninformative way that all kids normally respond to that question, but then she told me that she had been part of "the girl club" during recess. This got my attention, and I asked her what "the girl club" was.

"It's a bunch of girls," she told me.

"Really? And what do you do as part of this club?" I asked.

"We chase the boys," she replied without missing a beat.

"Oh, really?" I said with a laugh. "And who started this club of yours?"

"I don't know. I just saw a group of girls and I asked if I could play."

"Well, was it fun?" I asked.

"Yes!" she proclaimed.

It doesn't really surprise me that she has joined "the girl club". Last year when she was in kindergarten, they outlawed that kind of behavior because the playground wasn't big enough to accommodate that and the other kids zipping around on tricycles. She always did like playing chase, and it is only natural that she would slip into that.

However, it is a surprising thing in a few different ways. First, it's remarkable that she got off the monkey bars to do anything else. Second, once she was off the monkey bars, it's remarkable that she got out of the sand to do anything else. Third, it was surprising that she actually took our advice and looked around to ask other kids if she could join them in playing what they were playing -- this is something we've been struggling to get her older brother to do, who could accurately be described as a well-read sand hermit.

As a side-note, she was taking a shower last night and had a bunch of sand in her hair. When I asked her why she had sand in her hair, she told me that when she sits under the bridge at the playground at school, sand falls from the grooves in the walkway above her when kids walk across it. I asked her why she sits there then, if she doesn't like sand in her hair. She replied with the fully logical to a near-six-year-old answer of, "Well, there isn't enough room to sit under the slide."

Huh.