Friday, January 19, 2007

The things kids say

In the car on our way to dinner tonight, FB asks kiddo how his field trip went this week.


"It wasn't a field trip daddy, it was a day off because of that Brown Man"


Okay, bear with us here, we come from New Zealand; MLK, while known, isn't exactly an icon like he is here, so it took us a while to figure out which Brown Man (Capitalised just like the way he said it) he meant. In our day to day life we don't encounter many people of colour, a few Asians now and then, and I haven't really sat down and said people with this colour skin are called X, and besides I don't know what to call anyone these days - Black, African American...??? For kiddo the colour of their skin is purely a descriptive term; like blond or red hair, blue or green eyes, so its never bothered us that he says they are a brown person versus a white person.

Of course we had to try explain racism to a six (nearly 7, mom!) year old. So trying to keep it simple we explained that before mummy and daddy were born, brown people didn't have a good time of it in America and they were often not allowed to do things white people could (ride buses, drink from the same water fountain, shop at the same shops or go to the same schools), and that people like MLK told white people it wasn't fair for them to treat brown people any differently. I thought we were doing pretty good at keeping it simple. So quite how we got to "So brown people and white people can swap shirts now?" I have not one clue. Kiddos thoughts are not all that linear in the least, but at least he got the idea.

Now on the way home, it was a decidedly lighter mood. Kiddo loves music, the hip pop hoppier the better. Fergalicious comes on the radio and he is pleading for the car to do its magic and make it louder (he hasn't realised yet there is a volume control on the steering wheel - and since mums need all the magic help we can get, I ain't spilling the beans!). 3/4 the way through the song FB turns it down to tell me something and screams of indignation arise from the back seat.

"Turn my song back up...I like this song...turn the T&A song back yup!!!"
"Are you sure? I thought you didn't like girls?" (ahh what us parents do for cheap thrills)
"I don't like girls! Turn my T&A song back up! I like that song"


Yup word for word - he likes T&A. Of course he was remembering the first letters of T A S T E Y (btw, Fergie can't spell it seems - I had to look it up thinking maybe it was an English/USA thing, but no there shouldn't be an E).

The world is good, kiddo realises racism is bad, and he likes T&A. It's enough to make a mother cry happy tears!

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