Gender bias and the single mom

My mom picked up my son from school yesterday and kept him for the evening while I worked a few late hours. I got home just as he was getting ready for bed, and when I walked in the door, he didn't even get out a "Hi, Mom" before he was chomping at the bit to show me the new sign hanging outside his bedroom door.

"No girls allowed, huh?  What about Mommy?"

"Nope," he replied defiantly.

"What about your cousin?" my mom asked, knowing that he loved the chance to play with the girl who's only four months older than he.

"Nope, not even her," he insisted.

I have no idea where the seed of this idea came from, but my mom said he was eager all through their dinner out to make that sign and hang it outside his room. When they got to my house, she was urging him upstairs to start getting ready for bed, but he was fixated on getting that sign made.

"Make me a sign that says 'no girls allowed' while I get my pajamas on," he hollered down the stairs to her on his way to his room.

My dad kindly complied with that request (no, my 5 year old does not write as well as that sign), and they hung it up, much to my son's great delight.

He did allow one small exception to his strict "no girls" policy: I could come in to read him a story and tuck him in. Other than that, though, he didn't want to see so much as my pinky toe over the threshold of his door.

Rather than drop his prohibition and let me in, he even went so far as to empty his laundry hamper and drag all the clothes, a handful or two at a time, into the hall so I could do laundry last night.

This morning, as we were getting ready to leave the house, he was feeding the cat, one of his regular chores and made this somewhat disjointed comment: "If we're gone and a girl comes over to feed Henry (that's the cat), and she wants to look around my room, she'll go upstairs and see the sign and won't be able to go in, right Mommy?"

Let's ignore for a moment the questions of why a random girl would be coming to feed our cat in our absence and why she would then feel the need to explore his room. We'll focus instead on his joy at how that random intruder might be thwarted from snooping through his room by the sheer might of his sign.

While I have always known, of course, that the time would come that my sweet boy would begin to morph into a real, well, boy, I was kinda hoping to last a little longer before girls started being icky. Of course, girls being icky is probably way better than the years to come when girls will be so very not icky, so I'll take it for now and be grateful that I can still sneak in at night while he's sleeping, tuck the covers around him, stroke his soft cheek and kiss him goodnight.