Money takes his time walking his customary circuit at the Griffith Park pony rides, my daughter Maxie on his back. I took it as a lucky sign that they told us the pony’s name. With every step, my daughter’s expression becomes more relaxed. I bought her two tickets, for four circuits. Money halts in the same spot every time he makes his rotation. The ponies behind him stop and wait; none tries to overtake him. There is no protest from the riders. Eventually, a man with STAFF written on the back of his shirt saunters over and claps his hands. Money resumes his deliberate, unruffled trudge back to the starting gate. 

I watch from the moms’ photo-snapping spot on the other side of the gate. I take a picture that captures Maxie’s contentment and the unspoiled pieces of her surroundings: the clear sky, and surprisingly green trees. I don’t pan out to the signs posted above the two lines of waiting children. There is one line for the “slow ride” ponies, who walk for two circuits, and a second line for the “medium ride” ponies, who respond to cues to trot for the first circuit, and to slow to a walk for the second. Money and his companions seem to know that theirs is the slow lane, staying in their assigned track without any trace of jealousy, or awareness of an alternative. 

The humans on my side of the fence are highly conscious of the two lanes. Maxie’s friends chose the “medium ride” line when we first got here. I could see on her face that she followed them to avoid judgment, mainly her own.  This time, as I wave to her happily trotting friends from our position in the longer “slow lane” ride, the mom in front of me turns and says: “Wow! Do they ride a lot? My daughter was scared of how fast they went last time, and for a long time she didn’t want to come back.”  Protectiveness mixed with longing, patience with shame. “My child should be on the fast track” is the all-too-familiar subtext. 

Each of the trees behind the pony track has a unique, asymmetrical form. One has a long, twisty branch that, to the girls’ delight, has fallen to the height of the parallel bars at their gym. Another has a thick trunk that divides into a fork of branches just too high for the girls to access. A third has a selection of branches that the girls can reach by pulling themselves up the trunk on their knees, making holes in their leggings. The trees’ conspicuous individuality and asymmetry, esoteric classification notwithstanding, stands in contrast to the constructs built by humans, in which categorizations are inescapably hierarchical: we have slow lanes and fast lanes; high scores and low scores; mainstream classes and “special” classes; prestigious universities and community colleges. Judgment is heaped on humans according to which of these spaces they occupy; assumptions are made regarding their reasons for occupying them. 

I give the mom in front of me what I hope is an encouraging response, and turn my attention back to Money. I am reluctant to guess at his reason for stopping at the same spot of each circuit. Other ponies stopped for obvious reasons, such as to pee. A kneejerk interpretation might be: “he’s the stubborn” one, or “he’s the one who has been slower to catch on.” Unable to get a response from Money that would be intelligible to me, I do the next best thing: I message the great teacher, writer, and horse whisperer Samantha Dunn. Her award-winning memoir “Not By Accident” begins with a riding accident. “What does it mean when a horse just stops?” I write. Her response is swift: “With a pony like you are describing, it usually means that he is barn sour, meaning he will only go so far away from the place he knows that he is fed and where he has his herd around him.” 

Where he has his herd around him. What if the ponies waiting behind Money for him to resume walking were not his herd? If so, who is his herd? Why can he only move a certain distance away from it before stopping? 

Our system assumes that people in the same lane are automatically a herd. Children in the same class are expected to form friendships, regardless of the fact that their only commonality is the nine-month span in which they were born. Let loose at recess, they form social hierarchies and decide who is “in”, and who “out.” The red carpet is a Celebrity Only Lane. Its occupants sport heavy jewelry and lightweight bodies, thick makeup and skimpy outfits.  Unlike the Griffith Park trees, Hollywood stars strive for symmetry in their bodies and makeup.  

By the time she turned five, I couldn’t see a lane for my child. In one she was frustrated by “boys not following the rules”; in another she observed the other girls from afar, yearning but reluctant to join them. I decided that if I couldn’t find her a lane, I would create an alternative model, which turned out to be a hive. 

The social hierarchies that are seamlessly created on the schoolyard are described by Rosalind Wiseman (2002) in terms of the bee kingdom. The Queen Bee wields unchecked power over the rest of Girl World, decreeing who is “in” and who “out”, and determining the ever-changing criteria for gaining, maintaining or losing social stature. This leaves the girls under her spell in a constant state of stress and uncertainty, since rules and allegiances can change overnight. The Queen Bee cannot be said to have friends; fear is incompatible with authentic connection. Her coterie of Wannabes, the girls who appear to be her friends, are only connected to her through their obsessive need to appropriate her clothes, body type, and (most worryingly) the targets of her bullying. Exclusion is a tool that Queen Bees and Wannabes use to gaslight and demoralize girls who don’t fit in. 

In the bee kingdom itself, the Queen Bee plays an invaluable role, in that she is the only bee capable of laying fertilized eggs. Her presence reassures the other bees, especially the all-female drone community, of their ability to sustain themselves. There are nine other roles that bees play in the life of the hive and community. It is overlooked by all except experts and curious Internet searchers that there is a group of bees called the Builders. These bees are responsible for building the honeycomb, noted by Darwin as an engineering marvel. 

In the bee world, I decided, my daughter would be a Builder Bee, a member of a hive that, like trees and ponies, has no interest in lanes. “Builder Bees” the organization is not defined in terms of diagnosis: it is not “for girls with.” The yearning of a girl who is hive-less to find a place to fit in is not defined or confined by labels. In the two years since Builder Bees hosted its first event, parents and young women have told me again and again how important the organization is for school aged girls – from Kindergarten to twelfth grade. The honeycomb can always use another hexagon; any girl who wants to join Builder Bees is welcomed, regardless of age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or categorization imposed by a psychologist or school district. When Builder Bees bounce together on a trampoline, cheer each other on during a run-a-thon fundraiser, or create their own red carpet experience in which any outfit or accessory is cool, the joy that exudes from them is as unclassifiable as the intricacy of a tree. 

The primary purpose of Builder Bees is to bring girls together to forge friendships. You cannot put a price on friendship. A nascent organization has to raise money, of course; but the Money I value most is the pony who brings calm to my daughter; who, stopped in his tracks by the realization that he has roamed too far from his herd, can take a short, unrushed circuit back to his friends, secure in the knowledge that they will give him space at the trough, and his share of water to drink.