A Place Where Kids Can Run Amok Without a Reprimand

One little guy was snaking through a tunnel wearing a football helmet donated by Charlie Joiner, who used to play for the San Diego Chargers.

Joiner never looked that big on the field, but compared to this little guy, he must have been huge. It looked like the Lilliputians had suddenly taken up football and were using a tunnel to smuggle in players.

A few pass patterns later, the little guy had taken to the dance floor to do a Reebok soft-shoe, a midget-like cross between Gary Coleman and Fred Astaire. Still wearing the helmet, he looked longingly at his partner, a 5-year-old Zelda on her way to a Gatsby-like shindig. She wore an ankle-length dress with frills, enough makeup to make the nose itch and a look of “Aren’t-I-something?” contentment.

Every parent there appeared grateful to the gods of invention. This was a place where kids could joyously go berserk.

“I don’t have to say, ‘No.’ I don’t have to say, ‘Don’t,’ ” said Wai-Lean Roos, mother of 5-year-old Elizabeth. “I don’t

have to say, ‘Don’t touch that. You can’t do that.’ There’s nothing negative about the place. It’s carte blanche for fun, and you never have to worry about safety.”

Safe play is the motto of the Children’s Museum of San Diego, in the La Jolla Village Square shopping mall. The museum was opened in 1983 by a group of private individuals led by Sharon Omahen.

Omahen is a San Diegan who moved to Boston, then back to San Diego, but not before marveling at the children’s museum in that East Coast city.

“I was talking to a friend after I moved back to San Diego, and her child said, ‘Mommy, wouldn’t it be nice if we could go to the (Boston) museum today?’ Well, it made me think why not in San Diego?” Omahen said. “We have a variety of museums but we did not have a children’s museum.”

That set Omahen to work. She started contacting other people and “we all sat down around a table and talked for many months.” The result, after what she calls “a grass-roots effort,” was an offer by May Department Stores to use 5,000 square feet in La Jolla Village Square rent-free for five years. The store next door, Kinney Shoes, donated three-quarters of the rent on another 5,000 square feet, and the museum for kids was in business.

Since its opening, the museum, a nonprofit organization run by a 23-member board, has welcomed 200,000 visitors, according to spokeswoman Denise Biggert. Biggert said that, in the past 11 months alone, 62,000 have come through the door. The place is designed for kids 2 to 12, and the average age of visitors is 4 to 6.

A recent Saturday illustrated the popularity of the place. Dozens of kids were in any of several rooms, playing with building blocks, a telephone switchboard, a network of tunnels and shadow boxes, and a World War I-vintage airplane. A computer was available, as were the broadcasting facilities of KKID, a radio station teeming with aspiring golden throats. Painting and “create-a-face” were around for the more artistic, while two boys--who aren’t handicapped--played a furious game of wheelchair basketball.

“This way we get an idea of what some of our friends, who are handicapped, have to go through,” said Daniel Kurtz, 11, who was playing with classmate Greg Arrouzet, 11. Both boys attend Jones Elementary School as sixth-graders.

“We’re a hands-on museum,” Biggert said, failing to add that it also appears to be a feet-on and head-on museum at times, depending on the approach of the child involved. “Our philosophy is that children learn best by doing. They can play in the doctor’s office, work the telephones on the switchboard or dress up for a party. We believe learning is play.”

In a recent ranking of children’s museum facilities by USA Today, the Children’s Museum of San Diego finished in the Top 10, behind Boston, Los Angeles and Indianapolis, cities reputed to have the best such museums in the world. San Diego’s is modeled after those and clearly isn’t in their class, but hopes to be, Biggert said. The dream is for bigger, privately owned quarters downtown.

“We are not the children’s museum of La Jolla,” she said, “as some people think. We represent all of San Diego, not just North County.”

Biggert said the museum is privately funded, though some funds come from the city and county. Admission is $2.50 per person--it rises to $2.75 on Jan. 1--and children under 2 get in free. Hours are noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays.

On a recent day when the weather outside beckoned anyone with a love of sunshine and blue sky, the museum’s windowless rooms were packed--this is where the fun was. Soft breezes and puffy clouds would just have to wait.

“We had a choice,” said Stewart Bakalchuck, watching his 6-year-old, Joseph, build an airplane with building blocks. “My wife went to her mother’s, so we could go see ‘Cinderella’ or come here. As soon as the word museum popped out of my mouth, he said, ‘Let’s go!’ It was really no choice.”

Gary Pehaim was watching his two daughters, ages 4 and 9, amuse themselves with a dizzying array of costumes. “Should I be Lady Di or Madonna?” their eclectic tastes seemed to say. “Maybe I’ll settle on Annie Hall or something equally offbeat, if not bizarre.”

So, they donned lavish evening dresses, topped off with football helmets and firefighters’ boots. Behind them, a puppet show featuring Mr. Moose from “Captain Kangaroo” played to a cacophony of children’s squeals.

“Kids can free their inhibitions here,” Pehaim said. “They can’t hurt themselves or anyone else.”

“I would have killed to have been brought to a place like this when I was a kid,” said Becci Warne, who was watching her boyfriend’s son, 5-year-old Christopher. “He likes the newsroom the best. This is the one place he can come and pretend he’s a newscaster with some degree of authenticity (in the KKID newsroom).”

“That’s the best thing about the place,” said Connie Elwell, whose 3 1/2-year-old Lexi was playing doctor. “Kids can try on a real occupation. At the real doctor’s office, they’re not gonna let her do much. It would be, ‘Don’t touch this, don’t touch that.’ That intensifies a kid’s fear of the doctor.

“That’s it--that’s the secret to this place. It’s really low on fear. There just isn’t any.”