Everyone at The Tot Lot is a Communist

Yesterday at the Tot Lot Milo became fixated on another little boy's push toy, which Milo insisted on refering to as "popping thing" because it looked a little like a popping lawnmower toy he'd been playing with last week at his grandfather's house. Milo was contentedly bogarting the toy; he'd pulled it over to a far corner of the Tot Lot, away from the grabby hands of the other kids, and glared at anyone who came near.

Eventually a bold, much younger little girl toddled over and started laying her paws all over the toy. And for the first time in his life Milo looked at her and yelled "No!" He tried to move the toy away from her, but she followed him.

"Milo," I said, against my will and ever fiber of my being. "It's not your toy, so you have to share."

About half an hour later Milo was playing with a little toy car near the slide. Another little girl crawled over to him, eying the car. Milo looked at me and started to cy.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

Whimpering, Milo said, "Share."

"You don't have to share the car," I said. "You just started playing with it. You just had to share the push toy because you'd been playing with it for a long time."

I sighed. I could barely make sense of the sharing rules, so how could I expect Milo to? I think the rule at the Tot Lot should be NO SHARING ALLOWED. Kids should be able to bring their toys and smack anyone who comes within a two foot radius. After all, you don't have to share in real life. It's not like I might be standing in line for a bagel when a perfect stranger approaches me and says it's now his turn to use my iPod. Imagine a world where this happened. Where there was no private property, and if you saw someone walking down the street wearing a sweater you liked you could just yell "My turn!" and grab the sweater. It would be chaos! Anarchy! Or Stalinist Russia. Take your pick.