Wash On, Wash Off

My kids are really close. They play together, sleep in the same room, and freak out when the other one’s hurt. Now that they’re 5 and 6, they generally keep each other entertained and out of my hair (I feel this is my reward for having them 20 months apart and enduring years of double diapering). My brother and I were the same way. He was 16 months younger, and we were joined at the hip until high school when we stopped making eye contact unless we ran into each other in the bathroom.

So when my kids are in a situation where they’re split up, things get pretty sticky. They’ve been a little sad this week because they’re in different classes for the first time. And then yesterday, we experienced a growing pet peeve of mine: playtime gender discrimination. The 6-year-old girl next door asked Elfie — and only Elfie — to come over to her house and play. Now, don’t get me wrong — I totally get that boys and girls are different and often like playing different stuff. Sometimes you just want to have “girl time” or “boy time.” But I also know that there are plenty of things kids can do together. In my day (she said from her rocking chair), my brother and I mainly hung out with slightly older neighborhood boys. We played everything from baseball to Barbies, and no one excluded me because I was a girl or my brother because he was too young.

But yesterday, it soon became clear that despite my diplomatic attempts to have everyone play together (stay at our house, play outside, have Newt over too), this little girl was having none of it. This put Elfie in the unenviable position of choosing between her brother and, essentially, Disneyland (because they’d been wanting something “new” to do all day). My attempts at explaining loyalty to her failed, and even seeing her brother brokenhearted didn’t seem to sway her, so off she went. This left me in the unenviable position of trying to make Newt feel better. And this is where, I have to say, I had one of those rare moments of parenting brilliance.

When I was around Newt’s age, I remember an incident when I wanted to play with baby dolls and all the boys wanted to do something else. My mother told me the story of Tom Sawyer painting the fence and making it look so fun that he managed to get another kid to do it for him. I proceeded to give my baby dolls a bath in the bathroom sink in an attempt to prove to everyone else that my game was much more fun than theirs. This might’ve worked if I weren’t so obvious about it (“This sure is fun! I love giving my dolls a bath!”). It might also have helped if I’d actually been having fun at the time.

Whether or not this childhood memory played into my decisions, I don’t know. But after several failed attempts to find something fun for Newt to do, I suddenly figured it out — we’d wash the car. This resulted in Newt getting to ride in the front seat of two different cars while we moved them around (nothing’s better for a kid under 12 than riding in the front seat of a car). Then came the squirting, the soaping, and the squeegeeing. So by the time Elfie and friend walked out of the house (looking not terribly happy, by the way), Newt was having a blast, and Elfie was begging to join in. This is the part that shows how Newt and I obviously differ — apparently I’m from Bittertown and he’s been living with the Dalai Lama. Because he very graciously brought his sissy back into the fold. Fortunately, I’m also not from Stupidtown because I just stayed out of it.

I’m glad I didn’t think to tell Newt the Tom Sawyer story. I feel like I’ve spent so much of my life pretending to like things that I don’t. It’s taken me close to 40 years to figure out that you can spend your whole life washing the baby, but you’ll never get people to notice you until you start washing the car. I think Newt already has a better handle on this concept at age 6. I have high hopes — he has been living with the Dalai Lama, after all.