Gymboree trip teaches Mommy more than child
by Beth Teitell

Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Mommy never thought she'd take her son to one of those dreadful organized play places she'd heard other parents talking about.

Then again, Mommy never thought she'd refer to herself in the third person, as in ``Who's Mommy's favorite boy?''

Let's just say that having a child changes a person's idea of what constitutes acceptable behavior.

In the interest of being a Good Mommy, and not letting her 1-year-old son fall so behind that a Harvard sticker for the car's rear window would be forever out of the question, Mommy took her child to Gymboree over the weekend.

She packed mini baggies with Cheerios and fruit and a cut-up peanut butter sandwich, which was later consumed by Mommy herself after Toddler missed his window of opportunity.

``You're not hungry? OK, Mommy will eat it for you,'' she said, wolfing it down and swilling apple juice from a sippee cup when no one was looking.

``At least I'm not drinking from his bottle,'' she told herself, conveniently forgetting she had done just that the other day, although not, of course, without first twisting off the nipple. Mommy has her standards.

So anyway, Mommy and her son were sitting there in the colorful Gymboree play room, forming a circle with little Lucas and Roy and Katie and Eleanor, and being greeted by Gymbo, the Gymboree clown puppet.

They were singing some song (``Itsy Bitsy Spider'' perhaps, or maybe it was ``Wheels on the Bus''), when Mommy realized that although she was singing, and smiling at the clown, and enthusiastically making all of the appropriate hand motions, her child had left the circle, finding Gymbo less interesting than a slide he could climb up and hurl himself down from.

What should Mommy do? She didn't want to call attention to the fact that her child, and hers alone, had left the group (reflecting poorly on her Mommying skills). But then again, a tumble from the slide, followed as it would be by loud crying, was likely to cause even greater disapprobation from the crowd.

Nodding to Gymbo, Mommy got up and hovered over the slide, hoping to reinterest her son in the group activity by saying things like, ``Look at Gymbo! Isn't he silly!''

Luckily, in a minute, the singing was over, and it was time for a new activity. ``Everyone take a rattle or two,'' the leader said cheerfully.

Although Mommy sometimes feels like grabbing something out of someone else's hands - the last pair of 40 percent-off Anne Klein grey wool pants at the Saks sale, for example - she doesn't let herself do this, although she does commit the adult equivalents of the crime, interrupting others in conversation when she has a little joke, or racing to get a parking spot ahead of another car.

``OK, Mommy, you can park here for a while, and then it's going to be Mrs. Smith's turn. You two can share the spot.''

At Gymboree, Mommy was faced with a new challenge. Her son isn't particularly grabby, but at that moment, Jason's rattle became infinitely preferable to the ones remaining in Gymbo's box, identical though they were.

``Don't worry about it,'' Jason's mother said sweetly, as Mommy's child reached out and helped himself to the rattle.

Later, out in the parking lot, when Mommy had turned into Motorist and was in a rush to get home, she almost gunned her car past an SUV that was pulling out of a parking spot v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

Until she looked in the SUV's window, recognized the nice Rattle Mom, and smiled and gave her frontsies.

Good, Mommy. Good.