Unnecessary play, and an a-ha moment.

About a week or so ago, I attended Web 2.0 Expo. Lots to talk about there, but that's not what's important right now. What is important is something that happened after the conference one day. Something that had nothing to do with the conference, and yet it did.

On Thursday of the conference, I left early to go to a meeting at my son's school for the parents of kids in "junior preschool." The director of the school, Rachel, has these meetings about once every three months to give us a chance to vent about what little monsters our children are. Ha ha. Not really. The meetings are to talk about child development, and anything else we have on our minds. On this day, the topic was "The Necessity of the Unnecessary in Play," based on a newsletter article Rachel had sent us recently.

So Rachel, a very cool woman who has cropped white hair and great African jewelry, started out the meeting, as per usual, by showing about eight of us "junior preschool" parents video of our kids. And there, right off the bat, was my son, building a Lego tower. We all watched as my son's tower kept breaking apart, pieces flying off out of camera range. He continued to rebuild it, unperturbed, while I waited for him to scream in frustration, which is what he would do if either of his parents were in earshot.

But no, he just kept working on it, even though it broke again and again. I couldn't believe it. "He's so focused," said one of the other parents.

Then Rachel pointed pointed out that my son wasn't building a tower. He was just building. Just building, for the sake of building.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had just come from a conference that was all about social networking, and blogging, and Twittering--all for a purpose, whether that purpose was to get recognition, or sell something, or make a fortune, or whatever. And I had been drinking the Kool-Aid. But now I thought, When was the last time I did something just for the sake of doing it? When was the last time I wrote something just to be writing, and not to meet a deadline, or sell books, or get people to link to what I had to say?

When was the last time I watched a movie without thinking about the review I was going to write? Went for a walk without calculating how many calories I was burning? Helped someone without hoping to be thanked? Or, most poignantly for anyone dealing with infertility, when was the last time I made love without trying to get pregnant? When everything you do has a goal, your whole life is living in the future, and you don't ever get to play, and you very rarely have much fun.

"Children aren't busy," I once heard someone say. Yes. And I'm jealous. I want more Legos, and fewer deliverables, in my life. I want more fun.

Evacuation over. All is well.

Well, I feel kind of dumb. I arrived at daycare and hurried into the office. Everyone was working calmly. "Is everything OK?" I asked. "Yes," they said. I couldn't even tell if they knew what I was talking about.

As it turned out, everything was OK. The kids were OK, the teachers were OK, the staff was OK. No one cried or anything, not even the adults. In fact, they were all back in their rooms within an hour.

Now, I would have known this if I had been receiving my email, but my ISP's email servers chose today to crash. Here is the email I should have received, if my soon-to-be-ex ISP didn't suck:

We got the all clear. The suspicious backpack has been removed. We're back in our classrooms safe and sound.

So we had our toddler parent meeting as scheduled. We talked about tantrums, and watched videos of our kids playing. And that was that.

Another milestone reached (Silicon Valley edition).

The scene: The curb outside my son's daycare. I was about to start my ignition when my son piped up from the back seat. "Apple! Apple!" he said. I looked in the direction he was pointing. No apple. Only car.

And then I saw it.

The white Apple Computer sticker in the rear window of the car in front of us.

Toddler developmental milestone reached: Logo Recognition.

I didn't know whether to be proud ("My son can recognize corporate logos. Can yours? No? Oh, I'm soorrrrryyyy..."), or deeply frightened. Because other than a single iPod, we don't own a single Apple product.