Racism and Other Fun Things

Wow, it's been a month since my last post. It's amazing how having a job, no matter how little it pays, cuts into time to document the lives of one's children. How do normal people with full time jobs find the time to write volumes about what their kids are doing? Surely the lives of those children will be ruined forever by the nearly complete lack of comprehensive documentation that they can never go back and read over or watch on youtube.

But I do feel a little guilty about the disparity in coverage. Gabe can't complain. He got PLENTY of airtime over his first five years. It would take him a month to slideshow through all his pictures, watch all his movies, and read all the blog posts about the crazy stuff he was doing. Norah, however, is getting the short end of the stick. There ARE a few factors contributing to this that are outside my control--but I have to admit to a certain level of burnout as well. I've been updating this blog for almost four years now, over 400 posts. That's a lot of goddamn words about not a whole lot of anything. And I feel guilty about that bit because I was hoping to sustain my enthusiasm at least until she made it into Kindergarten.

But the factors that are out of my control tend to exacerbate things, too. For one, working at the bookstore is cutting into my blogging time. It's always just busy and noisy enough in there for me to have difficulty focusing on writing, so I can't do it at work, despite the fact that we're usually not doing much actual business. Second, there is Norah herself. She is, of course, still cute as a button. And she's funny as hell--but she's a completely different kind of funny than Gabe. Gabe's funny easily translates to video documentation and his antics almost always lend themselves well to storytelling. His physical comedy is very easy to work with. Norah, on the other hand, is more cerebral. She says and does some funny ass shit, but it is rarely possible for me to capture it on video--and without that tool, I tend to forget what's happened too quickly to expound upon it here on the blog. Further complicating matters is her blossoming performance shyness. She's already showing signs of unwillingness to perform in front of us, and getting her to repeat something funny when she does it is pretty much impossible.

All the same, we have managed to get a few funny videos of her doing stuff recently, which I'll share in a bit since I've been too distracted to dedicate individual posts to them.

On to the main thing I wanted to talk about.

Last night, after school and before dinner, Gabe came into the kitchen while I was cooking and said something along this line: "One of the kids (he gave a name, but I'll not put that on here, just to be polite) knows a Chinese move."

"A . . . what?" I asked nervously, partly because I wasn't even sure if I heard him correctly. "He knows a Chinese what?"

"A Chinese move."

"You mean like martial arts?"

"No. Like this . . . ." And he proceeded to do something pretty racist.

I vividly remember the many racist schoolyard chants from my youth. I cringe to think of them now, but I can generally picture one friend or another performing them even to this day. Maybe it's the guilt that keeps their memories fresh in my mind. Among them is the old chestnut "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these." The corresponding pantomime went like this: Chinese = squinted eyes pushed up at the corner, Japanese = squinted eyes pushed down, dirty knees = rub the knees and look at these = pull up your shirt to show your boobs. Classy stuff.

Well, this kid at school showed Gabe the Chinese part of that rhyme and Gabe shared it with me. Which led to a conversation about racism. A fun word to introduce to a five year old. It ended up boiling down to "It's not nice to make fun of people for how they look." My reasoning and admonishments, however, completely failed to sink in and Gabe happily showed his new "move" to Libby when she got home. She presented him with the same basic argument that I countered the move with the first time but added, "You wouldn't like it if people said 'This is Gabe!' and made a weird face, would you?" "I wouldn't mind," he said. "It's funny." And the thing is, he probably wouldn't. At least not now. It all goes back to that earlier thing about his brand of comedy. Unless things got out of hand, he probably wouldn't have his feelings hurt if someone was making fun of him a little bit. Is a knack for self-deprecation a liability for understanding political correctness?

And, speaking of being PC, I have to admit to pretty mixed feelings on all of this. As I said, I grew up with all of that nonsense HEAVILY represented in my community. We were a bunch of racists--partly because our community was 100% homogenous, but partly because our generation was one of the first to exist in the newly non-segregated world and we were all still figuring out how the new world worked. And here I am, a grown up, and I have a very strong sense of propriety when it comes to sensitivity. Do I start insisting that my child stands up to the other kids in school who come from families who aren't as sensitive--and, at that age, just refusing to participate is a kind of "standing up" to the other kids--and run the risk of making him a target for harassment himself? Sure he might be able to sway the opinions of a few of the kids to think the way he does, but the odds are probably greater that those kids will bring that story home and my kid will suddenly be the one with the "goddamn PC liberal socialist communists who are destroying our country" parents.

The dynamic of Gabe's school, it's worth noting, is going to prove very interesting through the kid's grade school lives. It's about an even mix of rural folks from around the school and hippies from the Newton area. So there is little doubt that our kids are going to at least get plenty of exposure to a broad range of personalities and world viewpoints.

Since we already gave Gabe a bit of a talking to about racism, I guess we'll see how it plays out. So far, he's not been terribly forthcoming about how well he's getting along with the other kids at school. I can see his goofiness either making him really popular or an easy target. Fortunately for him, he's one of the biggest kids in his class and his toughness is remarkable, so any bully his own age would likely have a go of it (except, of course, that we've raised him to be a gentle giant, so his size really isn't going to do him any good). We haven't had any reports from the school, either, so I guess we have to assume that he's getting on pretty well. I suppose it doesn't do much good to worry about these things until we're given an actual reason to worry, but it's pretty stupid the pitfalls and potential pitfalls we have to try to not worry about.

And, now, onto other things. Here's a funny video with Norah. If you are offended when three year olds moon you, you should probably skip to the next video.

I'm not sure what her obsession with butt stuff is these days. With her butt bombs and mooning and sticking her butt against us and farting . . . . I mean, it can't possibly have anything to do with the fact that I laugh hysterically when she does all of these things, right? This poor girl. I am cursing her with my own weirdness. I suppose she's striking a pretty good balance so far between girliness and tomboyishness. Maybe it will all work out. A pretty princess who will fart on you and laugh.

Not to be outdone, here are a couple videos of Gabe from Sunday. Our friend Sandy helped him cut some rotten pieces off our deteriorating picnic table. There was really no NEED for them to be doing this, but they did and he loved it because he got to stomp on things. My favorite part is the hat. A couple times, when he was jumping and swinging the hat around, he looked like he was doing a "tarnations" dance after a bear destroyed his gold panning equipment.

And here is the obligatory list of pictures that I found on the memory card while downloading the videos.

We always assumed it would be Gabe who climbed the door frames (which, apparently, is just a universal kid thing, like pretending things are guns even if you've never really seen a gun). Of course, after seeing Norah do it, Gabe had to take his turn, too. The fairy wings are unrelated.

Thanksgiving pictures.

Post Thanksgiving drive home. Gabe is watching Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was the only thing he wanted to watch for a couple of weeks. Mostly because he liked to see all the bad things happening to those kids. Hopefully he wanted to see it because of the punishment/comeuppance/justice aspects and not because he likes to see people done away with in creative ways.

Norah isn't all that taken by Wonka. This is the first time she's EVER fallen asleep while there was TV to watch.

Gabe with his slingshot.

From the stomping session.

Gabe's butt crack with his slingshot.  If he's aiming at the windows of his playhouse, there will be a reckoning in his near future.

I'm not sure who thought this was a good idea.

Oh yeah, Poppa made this for him. I guess I know where to send the bill for those windows.