When I was a kid, we didn't have 'play-dates' - we had "go outside and leave your mom alone, so she can get some work done". But when we went outside, we were never alone. The neighborhood was just lousy with other housework exiles – sort of a juvenile version of Lost-Generation Paris. We’d just go out to the street and look for little Ernest or F. Scott, who were most likely already looking for us.
Today it’s different. Kid’s have day-planners – generally known as Moms. Their days are structured from the moment they get up until they go to bed at night. Between school, daycare, piano, ballet, soccer and tee-ball, there is little unclaimed time. They don’t just ‘go out and play’ in the streets. The rare adventurous child venturing out in the hope of randomly finding another child encounters something like an old-west ghost town – lacking only a bramble of rolling tumbleweed to complete the scene.
The play-dates that have supplanted the random interactions of my youth have to be scheduled to fit into a busy kid’s calendar – sort of an ‘I’m booked solid through next week. Have your Mommy call my Mommy, and we’ll set something up’.
Because these meetings are infrequent and tightly circumscribed, their utility must be maximized. You don’t just ‘play-date’ anybody, and when you do, you don’t just hang out. There is an arcane pecking order to the playmate selection process that is utterly incomprehensible to adults, but obvious to kids. Personal compatibility plays a role in playmate selection, but so does the quality of snacks, comfort and privacy of play area, and a priority of activities available (Wii vs. Xbox 360 vs. Playstation vs. the dreaded non-electronic play environment).
These rules are arcane because the kids want them that way. Once grown-ups understand the rules, kids will change them, to maintain obfuscation. At the top of the pyramid (when I last felt I understood it) is ‘BFF’, or Best Friends Forever. Within this, there may be exclusivity, as well as BFFs who are ‘play-dating other people’. Misunderstandings can occur when members of a BFF couple aren’t aligned on that one.
Of course kids are kids, and some of them change BFFs like they change underwear – or career ambitions. This can come in the flavor of serial BFF monogamy, or in come cases BFF promiscuity. I’m just proud that I’ve never heard my little angel say anything to get a play-date that she regretted later.
Of course the play-dates themselves come in a wide range; from just two kids, to a group play-date, and the more common all-girls or all-boys play-dates vs. mixing it up. There are even the occasional ‘blind play-dates’, where parents who are friends bring together kids who are strangers to each other. Now THERE’s a dicey situation.
