The northeast United States finally dried out. October is barely half over and it's already set precipitation records. References to arks were becoming annoyingly common. Umbrellas seemed to be mating and cluttering offices and restaurants. The sun, aptly returning on a Sunday, was a welcome sight.

Especially since lots of talk about the weather makes me uncomfortable. It's not the banality; I actually find that part charming. It's the creepy, mythological language we use to talk about the weather. And rain is worst of all.

I wasn't sure what about the language of weather unnerved me until I saw it written down. On a faux-heartwarming magnet was the not-so-crazy injunction to "Listen to it rain." Listen to it rain. Not "Listen to the rain." Listen to It rain.

Horrifying. There is some entitiy, some primal force that does all the raining in the world. And you can hear it. You can hear this monstrous thing. Raining. The magnet was not to blame, of course. It just put in writing what everyone was saying.

"It's really raining out there." "Is it still raining?" "It's been raining for ten days."

Everybody knows It is out there, raining. And last week, after It had rained down on us without reprieve, people dreaded It. Sometimes, rarely, people spoke of the rain directly. "It's really coming down." More often they spoke of It. Meteorological and scientific advances aside, the weather is still a great, mysterious unknown and the best we can do to define it is tag it with our most meaningless pronoun.

Do we mean "the sky" when we say It? Listen to the sky rain. Clouds? The atmosphere? Reality? We don't know. We know clouds drop the rain, but rain is in the air, on the ground, on us, it's more pervasive and mysterious than we of the 24-hour Weather Channel dare admit directly. But everyday, implicitly, in our carefully chosen, evasive language, we admit it. Talking all day about something so indirectly lends a voodoo quality to conversation. It adds to the already tense atmosphere fostered by ten straight days of rain. It makes me grateful that It finally stopped.

Yesterday I went to a Gymboree. For those who don't have a small child, Gymboree is a children's clothing store (sort of) and an indoor playground (in a way). It's the type of place where hyperactive children of inattentive parents run around while inattentive parents of hyperactive children watch the mayhem and congratulate each other on the accomplishments of their respective offspring.

"Oh! Ashley is so big! Is she rolling over yet?" Apparently rolling over is a barometer of a child's development.

"Yes! She rolls all on her own! I can't leave her on the counter anymore!" This while the other child, a boy of about one and a half with a sagging diaper and a fascination for all things pony, runs hither and yon searching for the...?

As I said, yesterday I went to a Gymboree. The event that occasioned my presence at such an unholy establishment was a birthday. The young boy who spends most of the week in my girlfriend's charge, while his mother tends to his younger (and much bigger) sister, was turing two and his parents had decided on Gymboree as the most appropriate locale. I was in attendance as my girlfriend's date and as a ready-made excuse so we could leave at the first available opportunity.

With the setting chosen and squared away, the boy's parents had set about inviting 15 or so other children (and their parental accessories) to delight in all that is Gymboree.

And so, at about three in the afternoon, a flock of children one, two, and all ages in between, descended upon the padded, multi-colored indoor playground tucked between a Noah's Bagels and an auto parts store.

For the first fifteen or twenty minutes (after repeated admonishments to remove our shoes, but to leave our socks on [adults], or remove socks as well ["little ones"]) it seemed that the celebration was going to consist of little ones scrambling up and down decoratively cushioned variations of jungle-gyms. It soon became clear, however, that all this unscripted behavior was causing some anxiety among the adult population of the room.

In short order, a child-adult liaison was dispatched to round up the little ones. Tambourine in hand, she shook and shook mesmerizing every child until all the little ones where seated in a circle, attentively awaiting instructions.

The first task was rattles. Shake the rattles in time with the music. *SHAKE* *SHAKE* No, Peter, in time with the music. *SHAKE* *SHAKE* Megan. Megan! No, we're not playing on the horsy right now. We're shaking. *SHAKE* *SHAKE*

We sounded like a mariachi band on crack.

That task done, it was time to let the little ones loose. Once again they were sent our on their own. They ran. They jumped. They slid. They fell.

Time for another activity! Rocket-ship! To my eye, the improvised rocket-ship looked nothing like it's namesake. It was more like a 16 foot-long green and purple clown penis. The little ones were made to climb the circus cock and 1, 2, 3, jump! to the floor (with the help of their grown-ups, of course).

Another job finished, another round of, well, playing. Run. Jump. Slide. Fall. The rest of the party (I assume; we left after cake was served) carried on in this familiar pattern. Play. Work. Play. Work.

Even though my time at Gymboree was, thankfully, brief, I came away from it with the impression that some parents, specifically the breed that forces a game of scamper-up-the-clown-shaft on their little ones, view parenting as raising little adults. These parents were only comfortable with playing for short bursts. After that, as the average blood pressure of the room began to rise, a well-defined goal was needed to calm the children, and thus the parents, down.

The conclusion I draw from this is that places like Gymboree are designed for the parents' benefit more than the little ones'. Indeed, from observing the children, there was no difference between the play time and work time -- they were equally captivated by both. The parents, however, all breathed a collective sigh every time a new, and controlled, activity was introduced.

So, what are the little ones learning from these scripted activities? I suggest they're learning to play by the book. But, is that really playing?

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