Domesticizing Midgets

Today was Mooter’s open house orientation for “The Big School” as she’s calling Kindergarten. She handled herself better than I expected meaning she didn’t have an all-out meltdown, or cry, or cling to my leg for dear life. It was BFam’s first visit to The Big School as well since he’d always been at work during past visits, and he was NOT having any of that crying business from Che Princess.

The classroom was set up in a pleasant and colorful manner suitable for similar petri dishes of her age group. Everything was also height accessible for the pygmy in you. It was like entering Oz, making your way through Munchkin Land before you were off to see the Wizard. I asked Mooter to try her hand at making small talk with the other munchkins. She declined at first but finally gave in to a group of two little girls, chit-chatting away at the toy kitchen area about their enormous car notes and the husbands that won’t sleep with them. I believe I overheard one of them accuse her husband of having an affair with his secretary. It was hard to hear over the group of boys who had just punched in their time cards for yet another hard day at the construction site of toy blocks, and were swearing about the foreman giving them another set back when he didn’t order the part they’d requested. One pretended to pour coffee into his invisible Thermos while his buddies empathized with this obvious road block. “Joe is an a$$ holdin’ up this paht,” I thought I heard one say in a distinct Boston accent, “‘coz who’s gonna build this friggin’ building but us, eh? Nobody! Friggin’ A.” OK, maybe he really told his friends about the new booger collection he started over the summer. There was a lot of pointing to the nose area.

It baffled me that Beatrice and Harriet (as I later named them) seemed content play-cooking in the pretend kitchen. Joe, Mike and Fred (also my names) had no trouble adapting to their construction site of blocks either. Was this teaching domestication at an early age? Why didn’t Beatrice and Harriet break out their hard hats and join the boys? I think they could have at least switched it up a bit. I teach unification to both my girls – there’s no discrimination amongst toys. Whatever floats your boat is fine with me. Mooter stood conflicted between the two areas. She wanted to play with the boys because they had the lack of small conversation down to a science, while the ladies chatted away like miniature hens. She folded and gender won out.

She finally got up the nerve to speak to Harriet first… by poking her in the arm. “What’re you doing?” she asked. Hi, my name is Mooter and I eat small girls like you for breakfast.

“Playing with the kitchen,” she answered not at all looking at Mooter like “Duh! What does it LOOK like I’m doing?”

Mooter was perplexed. “Why?”

“Because it’s fun.” She handed Mooter a spatula. “Mommy, we’re so hungry. Could you make us some food, please?” Harriet asked.

Mooter, who begs her father to help him cook at every opportunity, is stunned by this sudden thrust into Masterpiece Theater for Little People. “Um… that’s my Mommy and Daddy,” she says pointing in the vicinity of her father and I. This was her cue to leave as she promptly turned and walked away. End of conversation.

Later I ask, “Did you say goodbye to your friends?”

“Yes.”

“When? I didn’t hear you say that,” I quiz.

“I DID!” She is exasperated by my stupidity. “I said ‘That’s my Mommy and Daddy’!” She is not as kind to me in her response as Harriet just was for her in the kitchen as “Duh, Mom!” is written all over her.

I didn’t say gender won out by a landslide.

Weird Science

“Momma, when I get to the big school, I not go to the lab.”

“You mean the Science lab?”

“Yeah. I not go there. It’s too scary.”

“Who told you it was scary? Is it because it’s in the basement that you think it’s scary?”

“The basement?! Noooooo. I not scared of the basement! I scared I get blowed up!”

“How are you gonna get ‘blowed’ up, Moo?”

“Like Dee-Dee, on Dexter’s Laboratory. I get blowed up because I not know what I’m doing! I don’t know how to do that stuff in the lab, Momma.”

“I didn’t know they were going to give you a final exam on your first day, Moo.”

“Ezam?”

“Nevermind.”