April 25, 2008. Canyon Lake, Texas. Girls.

It is so interesting to watch little girls play. Samantha who is six asked me to come with her down to the lake. She was wearing her bathing suit with shorts and crocks. Down we went, just the two of us. I sat down on a rock to see what she was going to do. First she took off her shoes and shorts and carefully folded up her short in a dry spot. Then she walked into the lake up to about her waist and just stood and watched the water. This took about ten minutes, all the time saying nothing. I am just watching. She spotted some fresh water clam shells and began to pick them up, bringing them over to me to see and keep. For the next twenty minutes she collected shells and organized and counted these shells which she kept on a special rock right by my side. For about thirty minutes she was perfectly happy. No swimming, no splashing, no throwing stones.

Then two of her sisters come down to join us. Abigail, who is eight, gets them all in the water to swim, but they decide the water is too cold, so the game becomes lifting rocks. Not throwing stones, just picking up the biggest rock and dropping it in the water. After a boat ride, the three girls swim off the boat, playing an elaborate game with a make believe family, with different names for each child, and in different families. The game continued into the hot tub, where I could overhear their discussions of friends and parties and activities, all made up. Now this kind of play I have never seen with my two boys.

By actual study, one hundred percent of boys will throw stones in the water by the shore. Some girls will do it too, but only a small percentage, and not immediate. A group of us at work were discussing the question of the differences in activities in today's world between the men and women. I am reading this book about Lincoln, and those nineteenth century women were not allowed to do much of anything. No wonder a lot of those ladies took to drink. The upper class ladies did not cook or clean, they could not hold a job, they certainly could not play active games where they could perspire. Now, we women do it all. But the question we asked is whether there are any tasks that are still gender specific. The only one I could think of was taking out the trash. Most men take out the trash. Thank God for that.