Number 7, who is four years old, has preschool from nine to twelve on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Usually on Wednesdays, we make a quick trip to Costco after I pick her up. It’s only about a mile from her school, and I get her the free sample/cheap frozen yogurt lunch combo.
She always shows the card to the person waiting by the entrance when we walk in, and then she gives the card to the cashier when we are checking out.
The whole routine is one of our weekly rituals.
Today as we got to the check out line, she handed the cashier my Costco card.
She talked to him while he rang up our stuff.
And then, she looked right at him, and she yelled,
“I DON’T LIKE BROWN PEOPLE!”
Oh. My. God.
Where the fuck did that thought even come from?
I didn’t know what to do. My face was 50 shades of purple. I was completely mortified.
I wanted to die. Or at least crawl into a deep hole and cover myself with a rock.
“Number 7! Yes you do!” was all I could manage to say.
The cashier, a guy who was definitely very brown, smiled at her and said,
“I like people of ALL colors.”
What a great response. Why didn’t I say that?
I wanted to say a million other things.
I wanted to make sure the cashier knew that really wasn’t characteristic of her.
I mean, blurting out embarrassing shit was. But the racist stuff wasn’t.
I wanted to assure him that she really didn’t feel that way. That no one in this family did.
I wanted to do something to make sure he didn’t look at me, shaking his head as we walked away thinking, “Racist mothereffers.”
But I didn’t.
I didn’t know what to do, so I just got the fuck out of there as quickly as possible.
When we were in the parking lot I pulled the cart over.
“Where did you even hear that?” I asked Number 7.
“Janie* said that,” she told me. “In the pool, when we were swimming the other day.”
Okay. At least now I knew where it came from.
I explained to her how that wasn’t a nice thing to say, even if someone else said it.
That she would feel bad if someone yelled in her face, “I DON’T LIKE WHITE PEOPLE!” or “I DON’T LIKE BLONDE PEOPLE!”
I could tell after I talked to her she was remorseful, and I could tell she understood.
But if I ever felt like a complete and total asshole, it was today.
Time to find the Sneetches and read it. A lot.
*name has been changed
If it’s any consolation….my (at the time) 4 year old told one of her teachers she needed a bath to get the brown off her skin. Then she asked her WHY she was brown…then she told her that she didn’t like the brown color. She had never heard that at home (my opinion is that we all bleed red)….Her teachers were a varying rainbow of ethnicity. I had never gone thru that with my son….so it was new and completely mortifying. Thankfully….the one teacher told me that it was actually age appropriate behavior and that she was just exhibiting that she was seeing differences in people (hair, skin color, etc, missing limbs, wheelchairs etc) and that because she couldn’t understand the “why” of peoples differences, she decided she just didn’t like it.
The teacher also told me that my son was the odd one…that MOST kids exhibit some sort of very loud and very publicly mortifying behavior when they are that age in regards to people’s differences.
Great book!!! One of my favorites to read to my son!