Cops and Robbers

Last week Stella and I went to Antioch Park. They have this miniature prairie town Stella loves to pretend is her adult-free community. She has a home, a school, a bank, a market, and a jail. She runs in and out of the tiny buildings like she's in fantasy play heaven.

There were about five other kids there, ages 8ish to 3ish, playing cops and robbers. At first I was concerned because I didn't see any adults around and I started to wonder if someone would send their eight year old to the park with a bunch of younger kids. Then I saw three women with the exact same stylish hair cut only in three slightly different shades of fake blond sitting on a bench at the far end of the mini town. They were having a lively discussion so I couldn't tell if they were paying attention to the kids. But then one of the fake blond moms shouted something unintelligible at one of the kids. The kid looked at her, shouted something even more unintelligible back, and then continued doing whatever it was she had yelled at him to stop doing. Good, I could quit worrying about how to get a hold of social services since that parent and child obviously belong together.

While I had been worrying about the state of our human race, Stella asked the biggest kid if she could play. Big Kid looked her up and down and asked if she wanted to be a cop or a robber.

Stella laughed like he was joking. "I don't wanna be a ROBBER. I don't wanna to be a BAD guy."

"Ok, then you're a cop." Big Kid was obviously getting tired of all this chit chat and wanted to go shoot some robbers.

Stella asked, in that innocent voice that comes out when she doesn't know something and she hasn't yet learned to be embarrassed by her ignorance, "What's a cop?"

Big Kid looks at me like, "Who is this kid?"

"A police officer," I said in Stella's direction.

Stella smiled and said, "Oh. Ok, I'll be a police ossifer."

Biggest Kid grabbed her by the arm and ran inside the bank building, "Ok, come on!" Stella squealed. She loves playing with kids around her age since she's stuck with grownups most of the time.

Big Kid started shooting at the other kids with "guns" made from his pointer fingers and thumbs. Stella watched him and tried to shoot her guns too, but she was just using her pointer finger like she was tsk tsking someone. I smiled and looked down so she wouldn't see me.

Biggest kid started getting frustrated with Stella, "No! You don't shoot like that. You go like this." He held his hands in perfect fake-gun form, thumb up, pointer out, and three bottom fingers curved inward.

Stella corrected her gun technique but the noise she was making as she was "shooting" robbers sounded more like the "pchew" sound I make when I toss something down the laundry shoot at home, not like a gun shooting a robber.

Biggest kid rolled his eyes and said, "No, a gun doesn't sound like that. It sounds like this...."

Biggest kid continued to coach Stella on the fine art of the classic good guys/bad guys game. But then, despite all the Big Kid's investment in her apprenticeship, after Big Kid started wrestling one of the robbers to the ground to handcuff him and shout in his face, Stella said, "Stop!" and stomped away.

I walked after her. She's getting so fast. "What's wrong, Sweetie?"

Stella stopped, shoved her bottom lip out and said, "I want to play with those kids, but I don't want to play mean. I just want to play nice."

I crouched down so I could look into her eyes and put my arm around her shoulder. "Why don't you ask them if they want to swing or climb that robe thing over there."

Stella's lip quivered. "Cuz they might not like me if I don't wanna play their game."

I grabbed her and stood up. She wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. She was smiling like a dog with its face hanging out a car window. "Come on, let's go!" I shouted as I galloped her down the sidewalk to another bench, away from the mini town.

We sat on the bench and watched the robins and the trees. My arm was around her shoulder. "I know how you feel. I don't like to play mean either. And if some kid doesn't like you because you don't want to play a mean game, then I feel sorry for that kid, cuz you're way more fun than a mean game and they just don't know any better."

She looked into my eyes and smiled.

"But just so you know...those kids were just pretending. When you're pretending to be a dog, are you a real dog?"

Stella looked at me like I was crazy. "No!"

"No, you're not.. Because you're a person pretending to be a dog. Those cops and robbers are just kids pretending to be good guys and bad guys."

"Why they wanna do that?" Stella tilted her head to the left and looked away from the mini town.

"Because some people just like to play those kinds of games. We're all different."

"...and we all like to do different things." Stella finished my sentence. I was glad to see those Mr.Rogers DVDs I brought home from the library were sticking.

I hate guns, so no doubt my views have rubbed off on her. But you know what? I played with guns when I was a kid. Ok, they were squirt guns and it was always just a fun way to annoy your friends and not a way to pretend to kill them, but still. I have never uttered the words, "Stella, you can't play with guns." For one, I try to let Stella figure things out herself as much as possible because if I nag or complain about something, she doesn't listen to me. I also understand that if you tell a child she can't play with a gun, that's all she'll want to play with suddenly. And you don't have to even buy a kid a gun. As Big Kid demonstrated finely, any ole hand will do.

Where Stella was leaning on me was making my elbow go to sleep, so I nudged her and suggested we go for a walk around the pond. She jumped up and said, "That's a great idea!"

As Stella took off toward the walking path that encircles the pond, I turned and saw one of the "robber" boys around her age looking in our direction. I smiled at him. He did not smile back, tipped his head in Stella's direction and yelled, "She's weird."

I laughed before I realized I was doing so, smiled big and replied proudly, "Yep. She sure is."