Thursday, July 17, 2008

It's fun for a girl or a boy........

Today my sweet friend Tracey invited Pumpkin and I to come spend the day at the pool at her country club. Pumpkin is only 1 remember so I packed along some small toys to keep her occupied after the novelty of the water and Tracey's kids wore off. At one point she was getting restless so I pulled out a toy. Suddenly kids swarmed around me clamoring for it. By the looks on their faces, you would have thought I was holding a 6-scoop giant ice cream cone. I told them that when Pumpkin got bored with it I was more than happy to share; and the crowd slowly dispersed with moans of disappointment. Despite the hoards of other kids to play with, the diving rings, kickboards and several other toys, a few boys and one girl stayed within earshot and never took their eyes off of Pumkin, just waiting for her to divert her attention to something else so they could pounce.


Finally one little girl could stand it no longer and slowly glided towards us, her brow furrowed as she thought of something to say. "Um, excuse me. I need to play with that," she mumbled with hesitation. As I had predicted, within a few minutes Pumpkin was no longer interested and I handed the toy off to the closest child. I then turned to talk to my friend and was interrupted by the sound of arguing as a much older girl (I'm talking like 12) tried to convince my friends' 4-year old to hand it over all the while trying to keep back the other two boys attempting to stake their claim.

What was the toy? Here's a hint. That's right, it was a slinky! I was amused and excited that even today with all of the flashing, singing, computing & motorized toys, these kids were seriously fighting over their turn to play with a slinky. The world is still a good place!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would put a slinky on the steps and watch it come down and do it again for HOURS when I was a kid. Great to see them love something so simple, like you said. Remember when kids use to play outside together? Kickball, sidewalk chalk. Times sure have changed huh?

SweetAbbs said...

I know. We used to leave our house at like 8 in the morning in the summer and go play outside all day long until dinnertime.