Nanny McPhee?

If I learned one thing about myself from my years as a camp counselor -- and trust me, I learned many, many things -- it's that the stereotypical behavior for which I have the least affinity is that of the spoiled girl-child, of any age. I learned pretty early that the best summers were those in which strong boundaries were set early on, and so my kids and I would come up with "Group Rules" that we all then enforced. I always made sure it included the usual suspects, but the kids would be so proud of themselves for coming up with these guidelines all by themselves that I usually never had to enforce them. The exception, of course, was whining and bossiness. Both the boys and girls enforced the first one, but every case of bossiness I dealt with involved girls. What that's all about, I don't know, but I would NOT stand for it. I got pretty good at developing crafty ways of handling these situations, though, but I'll save those secrets for another day.

This aversion to bossy young girls stems from issues I'm still working through from fourth grade, in which R. Lawson demanded that SHE always get to marry Heath in our recess version of "Big Valley" because she was the oldest and, obviously, thus the most ready for marriage. I had a suspicion that this was all poppycock, that the real reason had to do with Heath's evolution from "angry illegitimate son" into the quintessential silent type, but whatever. She was bigger than me. Somehow her impending marriage to Heath, a role that was always played either by my friend Chip or my neighbor Natacia, excused her from those obvious frontier duties the rest of us kept busy with until the whistle blew again, such as brushing the "floor" of our California mansion with "sagebrush," foraging for nuts and berries for the big meal, and looking out for Injuns and bandits on the Newington skyline. Meanwhile, R. held court underneath a giant bush and served fake tea in acorns for her most trusty female companions, which she'd ordered the rest of us (namely me) to collect. To this day I don't look at acorns with anything but anguish.

The kids I live with here are really cute, but the youngest shows signs of developing the R-factor. Today, she whined all morning, throwing tantrums and fake-crying because her older brother wouldn't share more than half of his candy, which he had generously given her after she ate all of hers, and cried on and on about how he didn't listen to her, didn't follow her instructions, etc. I think you'll agree with me here when I say that I really put my issues to rest when I heard her, thinking no one was upstairs, go into her brother's room and steal the candy. As soon as she'd thrown it into her room, she cheered up and gaily ran downstairs as if all were well to tell him she'd forgiven him. And I, who am free to use the mirror in her room to make certain I match, marched right into her bedroom, picked up the stolen candy, and stole it back. placing it in her brother's room out of her reach. The policing instinct born of many years of watching kids be, well, kids, has not left my system. Apparently.

I can't tell if I'm more amused or horrified. No, wait: amused. I'm laughing as I write this a little too maniacally for someone spending the whole day in a library.