The politics of the increasingly PC playground

Her mum started crying blue murder too.

My grandson was drummed out of the local playgroup this week. All very traumatic, and dredging up from the mists my own expulsion from Cubs as a nipper.

Stripped of my badges and woggle, I was. Cast out into the snow without a bivouac-building qualification up my sleeve. I might have memory-grafted the snow, but this is a wound that time has not healed.

The playgroup supervisor was not slow to twist the knife. ‘‘Hello,’’ she said, trawling through computer records on her laptop. ‘‘I see the apple didn’t fall far from this tree. Apparently you were turfed out of Cubs for a similar insurrection.’’

‘‘First of all,’’ I growled through clenched teeth, ‘‘he prefers bananas for their potassium, and secondly, that was a gross miscarriage of justice. When they said make a fire rubbing two sticks together, nowhere did it stipulate they couldn’t be matches.’’

‘‘You cheated.’’

I shrugged: ‘‘These days I’d be an entrepreneur – or a politician.’’

She was boxed in there. ‘‘Whatever. The situation before us now is, your grandson was involved in a fight. He didn’t use his words ...’’

‘‘He doesn’t have any words. He’s 11 months old.’’

‘‘Well you should’ve put more work into the flash-cards. We encourage accelerated learning here at Silver Spoons, the playgroup for gifted and entitled young persons, and we insist that the children share nicely, excepting the spoils of inheritance, naturally.’’

Sensing it was futile, I recounted the whole incident again. The sprog was perfectly happy in the playhouse. I’d paid the rent – a Chinese trust bought the hut for $1.2 million a short while ago and leases it back to the playgroup.

Anyway, there he was twiddling the knobs on his My First Espresso coffee machine, making steam-rush noises and minding his own business.

Thinking about business, I wouldn’t be surprised. Franchising this set-up, for starters. The Playhut Cafe – slot one into every preschool. Or package the ground coffee into little capsules that customers have to keep buying forever and a day. That’s my boy.

He was ready for a brew after the golf and tennis lessons, followed by Pixie Pilates and a satisfying spin round the yard on one of Silver Spoon’s Maserati push-carts.

He’d also build an apartment complex in the sandpit, but the steel girders turned out to be a dodgy shipment, so the building sits abandoned. The price of entrepreneurship.

After morning tea of a chia seeds and quinoa rusk, with organic kale croquette for afters, that trim-breastmilk latte sounded just the ticket.

I watched through the window because he can stand well enough against the kitchen counter, but he doesn’t yet have a Plan B for relinquishing such props, apart from falling backwards and smacking his head against something hard.

This is frowned upon in parenting circles, so I have to hover behind him, crouched like a catcher in the writhe, if you will, because my back gives me hell.

Anyway, the door of the playhut bursts open and in staggers this mean-looking toddler. You could see ‘psycho’ scrawled across her two-year-old brow – literally, in fluro-marker, and her mother’s handwriting.

So she swaggers over to my kid, all pout and nappy-pants. Trouble on a stick, but they have to sort the playground pecking order out on their own. I don’t intervene.

Spider is in the middle of fashioning a dollar sign in the froth of his latte when this tyro grabs him by his OshKosh B’Gosh chambray bodysuit and shoves him away from the cup.

My boy hits the rear wall with a thud. Being plastic, it ricochets him back, smack into the troll, and they both crash to the floor.

Heeding our chats about chivalry, he tries to assist her to her feet again, though pulling her by the hair is probably not bestpractice because she screams like a banshee.

That’s when he toppled backwards and hit his head on something hard. Hers.

I was there lickety-split. A clutch of mums pocketed their cellphones and followed. Spider emerged unscathed.

The girl was also unharmed, but howling the roof down. Her mum started crying blue murder too.

‘‘Clean out your PlaySkool locker,’’ said the supervisor. ‘‘I’ll take your swipecard for the pushchair parking lot, and I’ll thank you never to darken our designer changing-mat again.’’

With that, we were out in the street. Snowclouds gathered.

I don’t know what’s to become of him.

He’ll never get into a decent kindergarten now.