Boy or Girl

"Boy or girl," the woman asks.

"Two boys," I answer.  

 

I'm at the Golden Arches drive-thru and I'm trying to choose Happy Meal toys.  It looks like it's some kind of animal/insect/dinosaur, with no distinction between boy or girl.  So, knowing both kiddos like critters and with no time for a long conversation about it, I go with two boys.

But Sis is getting wise to me and has noticed my peculiar order.

"Mommy, I'm not a boy!  I'm a girl!  I want a girl toy!"

"But, Sis, I can't tell what the girl toy is and the boy toy is a critter."

"I don't care.  I'm a girl.  I always want a girl toy."

AGGGGGGHHHHHHH!   So, I ask the cashier to please change one of the boys to a girl.  And she just looks at me oddly. like how come you don't know the sex of your children?

"See, they're twins and sometimes they like the same things, and sometimes they don't.  But today they're a boy and a girl."

They've been two girls, too.  The day the toy was watches and I knew Bud would like a watch.  When the guy with the food saw us and realized one of the watches for a boy, he kept arguing with me, "but it's pink!"  I said that was okay, he could handle pink.  He wanted the digital read-out.  The man was loathe to hand over the coveted cardboard box of toy-cum-burger.  But he did.  And oddly, there was a pink watch with a bunny and a purple watch with a cat--Bud got the former and Sis the latter and they were extremely excited to switch to get the "right" ones--right because Sis, of course, must have the bunny; it had nothing to do with the pink.

Blah.

We get the toys, plus cheeseburger (Bud) and nuggets (Sis), and are perplexed.  In each box is a tall woman on roller skates.

Is this the boy toy?  The girl toy?  Is the boy toy a girl?  Was there no difference this week?  I think that the figurine depicts a character in a movie, Aliens vs. Monsters, but I'm not sure.  Confusion reigns.  And neither kid likes the toy.  Not because it's a girl but because it isn't cute and doesn't really do anything.

Forget the mediocre and suspect food, I'm going to quit going to the golden arches just so I don't have to face these loaded gender stereotypes and my children's predictable responses to cultural norms.  I just wish I could throw those in the trash alongside the rollerskating figurine.