What my son asked me this morning

This morning, I had to stop at the gas station before I took my son to Vacation Bible School. (I was driving him because my husband was attending the LPGA tournament that has overtaken our city this week.)

Anyway, I pulled up to the pump, and I noticed that there were three men in a large truck just to the left of us. I noticed them, particularly, because one of them was Asian, and the other two were Hispanic, but, they were all speaking Spanish. Very rapid, fairly loud Spanish. I was noticing them and wondering if the Asian Spanish speaker was Peruvian. (Because of the Japanese population there.) (Yes, I wonder weird things a lot. Weird, totally random crap floods my head, pretty much all day long.)

I got back in the car, and Gabe said, "Mom, did you see those men?" And I said, "Yes." Gabe said, "Those men were speaking Spanish." So, I said, "Yes, they were speaking Spanish." I was expecting him to ask me why the Asian man was speaking Spanish, but, that is not, in fact what he asked.

"They don't look like C~ and C~," he says. (C~ and C~ being our South American next-door neighbors).

"What do you mean?" I ask.

Gabe thinks for a minute. "They were...more brown. They were browner. But, they were speaking Spanish." (I should say that C~ and C~ are very light skinned Hispanics.)

I am not sure what to make of this comment. "Do you think it matters," I say, "how brown they are?"

Sometimes six year olds are very wise. "No," he says. "It shouldn't matter what color anyone is. But, I think, some people, people who are bad people, might think so."

I am quiet for a minute. Then he hits me with this doozy,

"Before Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, where do you think brown people sat on the bus?"

I try not to burst into tears and laughter at the same time.

"I don't know Gabe. What do you think?"

"Well, I think that probably some people made them sit at the back with the people who looked like Martin Luther King Jr. But, that was mean. That was really mean."

Yes, little man of mine, yes, it was.

LM