Complaint: Playdate Purgatory

I am so sick of playdates.

I’m not sick of any specific person. It’s much more generalized than that.

I’m just sick of getting everyone gussied up and snacked and bathroomed and heading over to the house of someone I barely know so we can watch our children socialize for two hours while we wait for mayhem to erupt (or not).

It really is like dating. And as Tracy Morgan on 30 Rock said (on his defunct TV show “Cruise Ship”) “I’m getting too old for this ship.”

I’ve painted a pretty bleak image of playdates, I suppose. They’re not all like that. Some of them are fun for the grown-ups too. But many aren’t. They’re just….tedious. Because your kids may get along, but that doesn’t mean you and the mom are going to be BFFs. It’s statistically unlikely that your child or children AND you will mesh perfectly with said playdate children and THEIR mom. So there’s always an imbalance.

And you’re always playing against the odds, as you try to keep the younger or older sibling entertained while the featured “players” of said “date” amuse themselves by taking out every single toy in the freaking house.

And I’m not even talking about drop-off playdates, which, while simplifying the equation of players and odds, leaves one sibling feeling irritable, left out and desirous of shopping for small plastic princess dolls and dresses that said sibling’s parent has to keep putting on the damn doll over and over, and no, I’m fine, just hand me a mocha and all will be well.

Seriously, caffeine plays a huge part in mothers’ lives. I’m sure you already know that. It plays a huge role in most adults’ lives. But now research is showing that some particularly heavy dose of caffeine is helpful in some biochemical/mental conditions, some of which I actuallyhave. Hey, are you telling me coffee is an approved drug? Bring it on.

I think a playdate is improved significantly by the addition of caffeine. I was at a perfectly good but but slightly chaotic playdate the other day when my hosts offered me some authentic Indian Chai tea. I don’t normally go for tea, but it was gooood. When I mentioned this to my hosts, they said, basically, look, what you Americans call Chai isn’t Chai, it’s utter shite, so here’s the real deal, freshly home brewed. The things you learn on a playdate.

But isn’t playdate an annoying term? Say it a few times. See what I mean? Someone somewhere decided to get cute with the whole dating concept and decided that no, it wasn’t enough that we had to date in our earlier years, but that even with the hopeful stability and maturity that marriage and family bring, we’d still have to go through the agony of more fucking dates.

So here we are on playdates. The same cool family who made me the Chai also talked to me about how in India, there are no playdates. They said, the kids just hang out outside together and play. You don’t have to arrange anything or get all formal in between the enrichment classes and Kindergarten homework packets and Gymboree. To which I responded, “Hey, just like when I was growing up!”

Why have things gotten SO ridiculous and scripted, that every social interaction in our children’s lives needs to be planned/penciled in and micro-supervised to within an inch of its life?

Can we please do something about this?