“Everybody Wanted To Play With Me Today!”

“Grownups and kids and teenagers and parents and brothers and sisters”

Kina has always been pretty solitary and independent at playgrounds, caring little for the social machinery of the scooter set, but a year of near-constant playground attendance will inevitably build up a kid’s reputation, and Kina seems to believe she has finally arrived as the mayor of the neighborhood—the object of affections, peer and parental, from the moment she stepped out our front door. Never quite the hermit, Kina wasn’t flustered by the attention, settling into her swingset governance role with ease, calming babies, finding lost toys, and appeasing her varied fans. She gets her popularity gene from Laurea, I think—or at least her tendencies towards the gregarious; I was always more of a curious observer (which I’ve also seen in Kina, and admired) than a king of the slides, so it’s hard to know how exactly Kina will wield her power. Having known the kid for going on five years now, I’m mostly confident it will be fine; she’s a good egg.

If the playground needs an emperor, I say, let her be benevolent.

dad