Early last week AJ and I were running errands on a quest for a cassette recorder with variable speeds for my transcription exam, and we ended up at the strip mall where he used to have his weekly gym/play class. As we headed toward the electronics store, we passed the front of the gym � it was closed. AJ stopped and stared through the windows wistfully. �Mommy, tell me again why they don�t have classes for big boys.�

We used to have so much fun at those classes. We started going when he was still a baby, when he�d just started to walk. I was glad he remembered it as fondly as I did. Now we were both feeling wistful. �This is a place just for little boys and girls. Big boys take classes in different places.� AJ looked at me suspiciously. �Like where?� �Well, your friend D. takes gymnastics.� AJ looked thoughtful. �I want to take gymnastics. What�s gymnastics?�

He kept firing off the questions while we walked around the electronics store, while I found and paid for the cassette recorder and while we drove home. On a whim, I stopped at a gymnastics center I had noticed about a half a mile from our house. We got out of the car and walked inside. The waiting area was packed with children: little girls in tutus, little boys in Batman T-shirts, babies crawling around the floor. Beyond the area, though, was a vast empty room full of mats and trampolines and bars and ropes to swing on. We walked up to the office and inquired about classes. �You�re just in time. A new session starts next week.� And just like that, AJ became a gymnast.

He had his first class last night. He was so excited, that I thought he couldn�t help but be disappointed. He would talk of nothing but the class all day and could hardly fall asleep for his nap. In the end, when I went to wake him up for class, he had fallen asleep on his face in a pile of books at the foot of his bed. He was very groggy and crabby as we got him into his sweats and drove to the gym, but he woke up immediately upon arrival. He was finally going to get to go play!

I brought work to do while AJ played, but I couldn�t bring myself to open a book. It was too much fun watching them run around and bounce. AJ, who has always been somewhat timid about climbing, was fearless. With the help of his teacher Mr. D., he even pulled himself up on the lower bar of the uneven bars and spun around in a circle. He swung off a rope into the air, letting go and freefalling into a pit filled with foam blocks. But his favorite thing, he said, was the rings. He grabbed them and flew halfway across the room. And the whole time he had an enormous grin on his face.

Mostly I watched AJ, but it was hard to ignore another class of two year old girls, all in leotards and floaty dance skirts, running around the room in a line. They were hilarious and giggly and still baby-chubby. They were so eager to follow instructions, that they occasionally had comic mishaps, such as the time when they were running about in a line and the teacher yelled �Freeze!� and the girl in front stopped so quickly that the once behind her all ran into each other and fell down.

AJ�s teacher, Mr. D., had an amazing rapport with the kids, commanding their attention but also joking and having fun with them. He had a class of twelve four-year-olds riveted on him, despite the distractions of two other classes in other parts of the gym making noise and doing all kinds of interesting looking things. For this he may, in fact, deserve a Nobel Prize.

But AJ was the star of his own show. He did things he�s never done before, things he didn�t think he could do. He came home feeling a little bit taller and excited about the next class. Unfortunately, he has to wait for two weeks. Next week�s class conflicts with Trick-or-Treating. �Mommy, can�t I just wear my costume to gymnastics instead?�

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