Little Girls in Big, Mean Packs

Today I took the l'il fella over to Mamalu's. This was our second choice, as the car wouldn't start, so the Children's Museum was out. Incidentally, I was curious why it's called a museum, but a quick trip to their Web site told me that their permanent collection has over 30,000 "cultural" objects and natural history specimens. So, as most of us probably think of it as a playspace first - Totally Tots friggin' rocks - and a museum second, rest assured, it is a real, collecting museum. But I digress.

The l'il guy was interacting with most of the kids. He bounced balls around, stood around the four-legged playbox thing - what's it called? - banging the little plastic squares and all the twirling plastic things, and partied in the soft, purple and yellow spaceship-like object. This is when our troubles began.

About halfway through our visit, the spaceship was empty and l'il man decided to crawl on inside. Almost immediately, a little girl appeared - about four years old - and said he wasn't allowed in there. I asked why, and she said it was just for her, and her friend. I asked where her friend was, and she said, she's coming. And then I said, well, until she comes, my l'il man's going to be in here. And she said, no.

It's funny with little people because you can't really argue with them. I didn't say anything else, and my son played in the ship for a few minutes until her friend came. I took him out, but only because the two girls were climbing up the sides of the ship and jumping through the top hole. Which, I admit, looked hysterically fun. But they would've landed right on little man's head which would not have been cool.

After this, I became aware that the play area on this day was pretty much being run by a group of four or five little girls, I'd say from the ages of 4-6. They had built some type of mat/ball object in the corner of the space and no one was allowed inside. Then, later, they made some kind of house out of the spaceship and some oval cushions, with a door and and a roof. You had to knock to get in. My lil guy just kind of looked in from the outside, not really pressing the issue, but I could tell that he wanted to know why he couldn't get into the spaceship.

A mom joined the play area with her son and her kid wanted one of the star-shaped cushions that acted as the roof of the house. But the same girl who commandered the spaceship for her friend told this mom that she couldn't have the cushion. The mom said, we have to share, and the girl said, no. She then took the cushions and put them back on the roof. The mom looked at me, asked 'are these your kids?' and after I said no, she just shook her head.

After this, the girls roamed around with a Martian raygun. I can't tell you the number of times they pointed it at my guy and pulled the trigger, after which a whir of lights and noises came out of the barrel end of the gun. Really, it was kind of funny, but still, a gun.

There is strength in numbers, and there's even more strength in a number of girls. The mom said to me, aren't we lucky? and I said, why? and she said, because we have boys. I didn't really answer - boy or girl, I'm just happy to have a child - but then looking at how the girls were acting as a pack was sort of creepy. Not in an evil sort of way, though. But one could tell that their good time was enhanced by the fact that they were a pack.

I think we stayed as long as we could, but when one of the little girls, in her haste to jump back into the hole in the top of the spaceship, tripped right over my lil man, which made him wail, I knew it was time to pack him up and leave. Another Mamalu's adventure comes to an end...