‘Lizzie, what on Earth are you doing?’ The woman looked nervously at her five year old daughter, a tiny girl with a wild mess of brown curls and greenish eyes who was playing in the sand with an unknown boy. ‘This is my new friend, Mike All,’ little Lizzie said innocently, holding the hand of a boy of about the same age. Her mother clearly wasn’t happy, even though the girl didn’t understand the problem. ‘But Lizzy, that’s a boy,’ she finally said, still half in shock. ‘I know. He told me. I like boys, mama.’ More fear emanated from the eyes of the woman when she heard those words. ‘Lizzie, you are just a child. You don’t understand these things. But you cannot like boys. It’s way too early for that. You’re being indecent.’ ‘But we’re just playing, mama. He is smart. He knows the names of the trees. And he likes robots. He’s going to be my friend, mama.’ ‘Robots are not a girl thing, I have told you that before. And you can’t be playing with him. Boys and girls cannot be friends. That is impossible. He shouldn’t even be here. This is a girl playground’ Lizzie looked very annoyed at her mother, who always seemed to be able to spoil the fun in her life.
Her mother turned to the boy, still nervous. ‘And you, little man, why are you here, this is not the boy playground. You must know that.’ The boy looked at her with big brown eyes. ‘I don’t like the boy playground, Madam Lizzies mum. The boys just want to fight and make noise. They are no fun. I like this playground more.’ Lizzies mother looked around. There was no-one else here in the sandbox with the wooden playhouses except for her daughter and this strange little boy Mike All. She was nervous about contradicting a male, even if he was only five, but she knew she had to. ‘You should go back to the boy playground, Mike All, it’s very indecent to play here. People will think strange things if they see you here.’ Then she turned to her daughter again. ‘Come, Lizzie, we’re going home.’ ‘I don’t wanna go home. Wanna stay here and play with Mike All.’ The boy nodded approvingly. They both were rather annoyed by being disturbed in their game like this.
But the mother wasn’t having it. She took her daughter by the hand. ‘No, Lizzie, we are going home. And you will be punished for your indecent behaviour. This is outrageous. And you should always remember that girls cannot play with boys. That is indecent. It is wrong! And it is dangerous too.’ Her daughter still wasn’t impressed. ‘Mike All is not dangerous. He’s my friend.’ Her mother sighed. ‘He might not seem dangerous now. You’re just a little girl after all. But you’ll learn later how men are, and he’ll be a man soon. Come, we go now. And you better go back to the boy playground, Mike All.’ Lizzie started crying, but it didn’t help. Her mother just picked her up and took her home. The boy stood there for a while, immovable, until his new friend had gone out of sight forever, and then he snuck back into the boy playground, where no-one seemed to have missed him. He vanished into a little wooden house, where he hid for the rest of the afternoon until his mother came looking for him.
Little Lizzie never played with boys again, and learnt over time why that was better. And they were out of reach anyway. It would be more than ten years before she would have the chance to talk to one of them again, and by then she had learnt about how men were, and wasn’t the little innocent child of the playground anymore.
