Friday, October 2, 2009

The Politically Incorrect Post

This morning, while in line in HRH's schoolyard waiting for the teacher, Gremlin noticed something. Something he's not run into before. In his best stage whisper, he screamed said to me "Mommy, that lady has a black thing on her face!" Sure enough the mom directly in front of us had a beauty mark, just a little smaller than a dime, right above her lip.

I tried to play it off cool and informed him "Oh, sweetie, that's a mole. Like the one you have right here," pointing to the tiny pencil dot mole on his clavicle.

"No Mom! That one's a LOT bigger than mine..."

Thankfully, the line began to move and the playground was noisy. I don't know if she heard us as I ushered him away going into my "everyone's different" song and dance. And quite honestly, she had a big ass mole on her face. No harm, no foul.

Not so much with Gremlin's last astute observation:

The boys and I were in Whole Foods when Gremlin noticed a little person who works there. I had seen her before, probably noted it, and not thought much more about it. Grem thought A LOT about it. And he was delighted!

Again in his stage whisper, Gremlin stood not ten feet from her grabbing my shirt to draw my attention and screamed said "Look, Mom! She's so LITTLE!"

Oh. God. There are certain observation situations (unusually overweight people and those in wheelchairs come to mind) that you're semi-prepared to explain and not feel too badly about. This one? Not so much.

Still with the talking, Gremlin has moved onto "She's a grown up! But she's LITTLE! Like me!"

While again singing my "everyone's different" song, I gave the Whole Foods lady an apologetic smile and dragged my boys into another aisle.

With my hand over Gremlin's mouth.

10 comments:

Kate Coveny Hood said...

I think the mole things was probably the worst. The little person has to be used to children asking questions.

What is this "everybody's different" song? I want to learn it for future reference.

tracey.becker1@gmail.com said...

You have to sing that song. I thought I had covered it really well with all of my kids. And we live in a pretty diverse area, or so I thought. My daughter recently belted out in WalMart "Why is their skin so BLACK?!?"

I nearly died. As if she hasn't seen a person with darker skin before?

I did the "everyone's different" and "we all have different skin colors" blah blah blah but kids are so tactless, it's painful.

sitting on the mood swing at the playground said...

Oh, I'm waiting for these comments/conversations.

A few years ago my nephew told me he saw a midget at Target who paid with a $100 bill and my nephew stared. I told my nephew that I see a little person every day when I leave work and that she's leaving her job, too. He asked me if I stared at 'my midget' I said no. He said, "so she probably doesn't have $100 bills." Apparently, it was the money that caught his eye and not the person.

Jenn @ Juggling Life said...

You can always act like he's not with you!

{sue} said...

I'm sure that people with an obvious difference like that are used to hearing kids innocent comments. What is more telling is your great response! My kids always seem to want to point out larger people and drop the F bomb. (Not THAT F-bomb. The 3 letter one.) Oy.

Mama-Face said...

I love how sweet and innocent gremlin is. Truly.

Momma Hunt said...

This is such a hard thing, you don't want to set up an environment where your kids can't comment and ask questions, but then again you would always prefer it not to be those types of questions in public

KC said...

We've had the little person comment before, but mainly all the politically incorrect questions target me. Like, what happened to your belly?

Jason, as himself said...

Mmmmm hmmmmmmm. Yep.

I don't know if you read my post a few months back when we saw the real Mini-me at the LAX? And Diego shouted something? And Mini-me was not happy?

Yep.

anymommy said...

They are such observant, LOUD little creatures, aren't they? Kids, I mean. Ahem. Almost appeared unPC myself there for a moment!

 

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