September 2-5, 2005
We celebrated Labor Day weekend this year by camping in Canada with friends who live in Rochester, New York--my friend Kevin found this great campsite roughly half-way between Rochester and Chicago in Canada, Rondeau Provincial Park, and we had a busy two and a half days eating, swimming, and playing on the shores of Lake Erie.
Since we were only camping with one other family and not 4 or 20 (my other camping experiences this year), I could really focus on how the kids all interacted. Kevin has three children: Elizabeth, who is two years older than my four-year-old Sonia, and Ross and David, who are 9 and 12 compared to Isaac who is 8. The striking thing to me about the kids was how much the girls stuck together and how much the boys stuck together.
Of course once I thought about it a little harder, I realized that of course when I was that age I only played with girls. Boys were something to be avoided at most costs until I got to (the middle of?) high school. When I remember how I was as a kid I marvel at the fact that now I have a life where I work mostly with men, and where as a result I have at least as many close friends who are male as who are female.
It's funny, though, as comfortable as I am working with (most) men, I still find myself sitting next to women when I walk into a crowded meeting room and have to pick where to go. More than once I have looked around after getting settled and thought "Hey, why are all the women in this room sitting next to eachother?" I wonder if it's still some residual comfort that we subconsciously get by banding together in this small way...maybe by the time Sonia and Elizabeth are grown up there will be too many women in physics that we won't all fit in one corner of the room.
Comments