Extracurriculars

When my son was little, all my best mom friends only had daughters his age. And the great thing about preschool-aged children is you get to tell them who their friends are, based on the parents that YOU prefer to spend time with. And so it followed that while other 4-year-old boys were being schlepped to soccer, my son was being introduced to the wonderful world of ballet. Look – I have him the choice, but he’s a smart fellow and standing out in the hot sun on a baseball diamond waiting for his teammates to run around the bases was just not as enticing as skipping around to Disney songs, playing dress up with his besties. So he was the lone boy in a sea of glitter and hearts and rainbows. Sometimes he wore a superman cape since his friends got to dress up for class. And when he returned home he would happily resume whatever train track he’d been building or truck book he’d been reading. Sometimes with sparkly nail polish, because, why not? When he no longer wanted to do ballet, he told me, and we moved on to a new activity. It was THAT simple. Today he’s obsessed with Minecraft and Legos, and his self-selected friends are all boys. But he is still happy to hang out with his oldest girl-friends, who are like sisters, and who I heard him defend to a little boy the other day. “There are lots of fun girls,” he said, “just like there are lots of fun boys.”…

I only took piano for a hot second when I was a kid. I remember enjoying the lessons – I did them at my teacher’s house. She was ancient, had lots of cats, and her home smelled like flowers. But one day I showed up for my lesson but no one answered the door. I knocked and knocked until finally a neighbor came out and said, “didn’t you hear the old lady died?” And then I saw Turnip, one of the cats, wandering around the porch. I went home and never resumed piano again.