The Stat's: big brown eyes, vel-crow curly black hair, comes up about waist high on me, favorite color is green, african american, four years old, loves to dance, can sing all of the vegitales theme song, and has an obsession with eating chocolate. This is Tristan. We first met when he was one and have grown up together ever since. I've seen first steps, first words, and even first successful potty trips! Tristan was adopted by a woman at my work and her husband (both being white). He comes to work with us every day. I know it's kind of an odd work place! I love tristan so much that I thought I would share a few of his "kids say the darndest things".
- Tristan loves "boo-boo's". We practice the "kiss it to make it better" practice at work to try and conserve band-aids. He'll spend minutes inspecting my hands just to spot something that looks like a scratch so that he can quickly make it feel better. One day when my faces complexion wasn't the clearest, He pointed at a red bump on my chin.
T: "Do you have a boo-boo?" (getting ready to kiss my chin)
M: "hmm... No, that's called a pimple" (trying not to be embarrassed that he just pointed out a zit)
T: "A pimmppeeeel?" (struggling with the new word)
M: "Yes, a pimple"
T: (looking at me for awhile contemplating) "Mary, you have pimples ALL OVER your face!"
- Of course, as a child we have no real concept of race. There is no difference between people when there's a difference in color. He has no way of knowing that he has a blended family by him being black in a white family. One day he was sitting in my lap and we were tracing our hands on paper.
T: (struggling to keep the pen close to my fingers as he traced around them) "I have dark skin" (he said proudly)
(he frowned at my hand on the paper) "You have white skin"
M: (I was a little at a loss for what to say since he's never noticed the difference before. He was looking at me like something had to be wrong for us to be different colors) "Yes, your dark and I'm white. It's just the color of our skin. People have all different colors of skin." (whew, that was fairly well put)
T: (his face lit up like a light bulb) "So there's green skin!"
M: "oh no Tristan, not every color is a skin color"
He was thoroughly disappointed and upset that there were no orange and green people. Afterall, those are his favorite colors!
- While Tristan is so young and is around girls most of the time, we struggle at the office to keep Tristan "man-ly". It took us a week to convince him that orange was a better favorite color than pink. I had painted my nails, and Tristan was admirering the dark red color.
T: "What's that?" (pointing to my colored nails)
M: "I painted my nails. Do you like them?"
T: "YES, can I paint my nails?!?"
M: (opps, this is not good) "ummm... no, your a boy."
T: "I'm a booooyyyyyy, so I can't paint my nails? Why, not?"
M: "Well... See, girls paint there nails for boys.... and boys (struggling to think of something) cut their hair for girls!"
T: (he examines my face as he thinks about this)
M: "remember, you're hair is short cause you just cut it awhile back."
T: (He tries to run his fingers through my long hair) "yeah, I did...... So I can't paint my nails, but I can cut my hair?"
M: "Yep! And I can paint my nails, but I let my hair grow out long."
So don't forget to paint your nails girls, and boys get your hair cut for the girls!
