Colored People

A wonderful thing about having children is seeing the world through their eyes.  And apparently, what color people are is something they have a hard time grasping.  Raising a kid in a predominantly white neighborhood in the 70’s, my parents made a conscious decision never to mention a person’s skin color, a decision  I was not even aware of.  I never heard them say “the white guy across the street” or “that Black girl”, or any other descriptive term having to do with color.  Instead, they would say such things as “the blonde guy” or “the lady 2 houses down”.  So, when I started kindergarten, I was quite shocked when a little boy called me Black.  I, being a smart ass even back then, quickly told him that I was brown and he was peach, or perhaps apricot. (Thank you very much, Crayola box of 64 crayons!)  He tried to correct me, insisting that he was white and I was Black.  Never to be outdone, I took of one of my orthopedic shoes, which, if you haven’t had the opportunity to wear such marvelously painful things, look a lot like black and white oxfords, and hit him on the forehead, leaving a black scuff mark.  I proudly declared “see, that is black, you are peach, and I am brown”.  Needless to say, my parents had to have a conversation with me that afternoon to explain that no, he wasn’t calling me dirty, that Black was an expression for people of color and that White referred to people with less color.  I was very confused by this and wanted to know what to call yellow people.  I’m sure at this point, my parents wanted to go have a drink instead of answer all my questions, but they continued to try and explain why we had to group people by colors, even though they weren’t really that color.  Yeah, I know, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree with Lela.

  

                                       

                                                               My beloved orthopedic shoe

Even though I can barely remember that experience, I figured that in today’s society and considering that Lela goes to a more racially diverse school, I wouldn’t have to deal with that with Lela.  Today we are known as African-Americans (although, please don’t call my father that or you will get a long lecture about how he IS NOT from Africa), white people are Caucasian, and yellow people are Asian, so color shouldn’t even come up, right?  Wrong!  Apparently, using the right color is still important when you are a kid. Even for white, I mean Caucasian kids.  Just ask Pike, the son of a friend of mine, who decided, after seeing Avatar, that being blue was way better than being Caucasian.

                                                 Pike's attempt to turn himself blue 

I had no idea Lela had even thought about what color people are until one day I was talking to her about someone at work, and out of nowhere she asked me what color was the person, tan or brown.  Now, I know things have changed, but I thought there were more choices than tan or brown.  So, I asked her what color was her Caucasian teacher, Mrs. Hill.  She huffed and said “tan” like I was the dumbest person on the planet.  Just to be sure, I decided to ask her what color was Maura, a friend of mine who is, shall we say, just a shade darker than Casper.  Again, she huffed “tan”.  I’m fairly sure that is the first and last time anyone has ever called Maura tan.  I decided to go for the gold “Lela, what color am I?”  She rolled her eyes and said “Brown, of course.  Don’t you know what color you are?”  Apparently, I’ve known since I was 5, but the rest of the world just hasn’t caught up.  Lela then told me that her sister, who is a lovely shade of café au lait as far as I’m concerned, “throws her off” because she is usually tan, but in the summer, she is brown, so she doesn’t know what to call her.  And, just when I thought we had covered everyone, she ended the conversation with “Mommy, there are black people, like Gramps (who is as dark as Wesley Snipes), but you don’t call them Black cause it might hurt their feelings.”  I was afraid to ask why it would hurt their feelings.  Maybe it’s because they live in the negrohood.

                                             Me with my one brown and two tan friends

Funerals

Death is never a funny thing, unless you live with me.  Unlike most people who cry when they are upset, I tend to make jokes.  I understand that this is my way of coping, but it's not always the most appropriate response.  I once had a lady yell at me in court because I was laughing at my client killing a man by doing a "wheelby" shooting from his wheelchair after they left the strip club (that is a story for a different day and a different blog).  After my grandfather's funeral, where I laughed hysterically because Lela peed on her daddy's lap, a relative started screaming like she just realized he had died after we had been there for an hour, and I kept envisioning asking the funeral director "Can I have fries with that?" when my mother told me they had to get an extra large casket like she was supersizing her order at McDonalds, I have been banned from attending any funerals.

Unfortunately for everyone, Lela has had to attend quite a few funerals in her young life, and considering she is my child, she has her own view on things.  When both my grandfathers died, she was too young to ask any questions, thank God.  Last year, my husband's grandmother died.  This was the first time Lela attended a funeral and could actually talk.  I braced myself for all her questions, knowing that there would be a stream of them.  Instead, she watched everyone quitely, then passed tissues around and told people to wipe their faces.  This year, my husband's mother died.  Being a year older and nosier, Lela finally got around to asking some questions about death.  She wanted to know where was Grandma Leo.  We told her she had died and gone to a better place where she was no longer sick and no longer hurt.  She then proceeded to name off everyone she knew whom had died, including our dog, and asked if they were all in heaven together.  Once we told her yes, she seemed content with the answer and walked off.  I thought this was the end of it.  Of course, I was wrong.

At the funeral, I braced myself for the first time she would see her grandmother in the casket.  I held her little hand and we walked up to the open coffin.  She looked inside and I held my breath, hoping she wouldn't do anything drastic like try to climb in.  She looked, said "That really doesn't look like her, but okay" and sat down.  So much for that.

During the funeral, she seemed content to play her Nintendo (I have never been so happy for a handheld game in my life) until people started crying.  Then, in usual Lela fashion, at the top of her lungs and with all the attitude she could muster, she started asking "Why is everybody crying?  I mean, you said she went to a better place, so what's the problem?" 

Now, exactly what was I supposed to say to that?

Reading

I don't know about most of you, but when I was in school, we learned how to read with books involving, Dick and Jane, and their dog Spot.  As I got older, Dick and Jane were replaced by books without pictures and with chapters.  Eventually, as I got older, the books got bigger, as did the words in them.  Now that I'm a lawyer, half my day is spent reading books filled with language and comments no one can undrstand so that we can earn the money we charge to explain that "estoppel" is just a fancy word for stop.

When Lela started first grade, I assumed that she too would be reading about Dick and Jane.  Boy was I wrong.  I'm not sure what happened to Dick and Jane; I assumed they got married, had some kids, went through a nasty divorce, and are now co-parenting kids who are in therapy.  I'm sure Spot is long dead, buried in back yard of the family home that was sold as part of the divorce.  The reason I am sure of all this is that Lela has no idea who these people are.  Instead, she is reading about the rain forest in the Amazon, how to build castles, and astronauts.  I know this because she has homework.  Yes, homework in the first grade.  And Lela, being Lela, decided that instead of doing her homework at home (what a novel idea), she would read to me every morning on the way to school so that I could try not to crash while signing her slip to prove she read to me.  I must admit, I actually loved hearing her read to me and was caught off guard by how well she could read.  Until one day, she was reading about libraries.  She began by telling me what a library is and why it's good to have one.  Then she read, with all the surety she could muster, "There is a library in almost every negrohood."

"What did you say,"  I asked, trying my best not to laugh.

"There is a library in almost every negrohood" she repeated, loudly this time in case I was just hard of hearing.

I couldn't help it; I laughed, and I laughed hard.  I know, bad mommy, but I couldn't help myself.  I told her that it was neighborhood, not negrohood, once I could control myself.  Lela looked me dead in the eye, and with all seriousness, said "Mommy, we don't laugh when people make a mistake."  Guess that will teach me.  Sorry, Lela, but they clearly didn't teach manners in my negrohood.

Cursing

I've always been told that children are little mimics.  I didn't realize exactly how true this is until Lela learned to talk.  My older child was not one for repeating everything she heard, but Lela had to be different.  Unfortunately, one of her favorite pastimes became cursing.

We first learned that our beautiful baby girl had become a potty mouth when we heard her singing "fuck you" as if it were some pop song. My rebuke of "Lela, we don't say that word" was quickly met with "I'm just singing".  Thanks, Lela, for the vocabulary lesson

The next time she decided to demonstrate her skills was when we were returning from soccer practice.  As we are walking back to the car, the beads in her hair working as an alarm letting me know exactly how far ahead of my slow behind she had gotten, she demanded to have her snack, a Fruit Roll Up.  I put her in her car seat and told her to hold on, I would open it in a second.  As I get into the car, I suddenly hear "Bitch" coming from the back seat.  Enraged, I took her out of the car, spanked her (yes we spank because time out just did not work, but that's for another blog), drove home, spanked her again, and sent her to her room.  My husband, oblivious to the word that has just come out of our then 3-year-old, asks "What happened?"  I tell him, making sure to leave out nothing.  Summer then chimes in "That's not all she said".

Oh dear Lord, what else could she have said?  All sorts of things come to mind, and I begin to wonder whether washing her mouth out with soap will actually work.  I tentatively ask Summer "What else did she say?"  Her answer: "Bitch, give me my Fruit Roll Up!"

Well, at least she used it in context.

Lela at her soccer banquet - No cursing, thank God