Earlier today I posted
this diary on one of the many things that gets under my skin as a white guy raising a black kid, and I truly appreciate the response.
As promised, this one is purely for amusement purposes. While 90 percent of my funny Tyren stories come from the fact that he's just a funny kid with a penchant for eating cheeseburgers and getting himself stuck in odd places, several of them stem from the racial disparity between him and those around him. Some of those stories are poignant or frustrating or sad or enlightening, but this one's just funny.
More on the flip.
When Tyren was little, we lived in a town of 824 people - 823 of whom were white. When he was about three weeks shy of his fourth birthday, we took a Caribbean cruise. We got on a plane in Chicago bound for Fort Lauderdale. The plane ride was of course a wonderfully novel experience on its own. Once we landed and the excitement of that whole process died down, we were milling about in the aisle waiting to get off the plane with everyone else. Rather suddenly Tyren pointed at a middle-aged gentleman and said, rather loudly, "HEY! YOU'RE BLACK LIKE ME!"
Luckily, the gentleman was very gracious and accepted our awkward smiles as apologies. "Why, yes I am," is all he said.
And luckily each of the next six people Tyren did that to were similarly gracious.
Finally, we had checked into our hotel room and an orderly came to deliver some Kleenex. When I opened the door, Tyren once again pointed and shouted, "HEY! YOU'RE BLACK LIKE ME!"
I closed the door and in my best wise fatherly way I knelt down next to him, put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Tyren, I think it's great that you like black people. But it's not polite to point. So next time if you see a black person and want to talk, how about you just say, 'Hi,' ok?"
He kind of pouted like he was in trouble. "I'm not mad," I said. "It's ok. Just next time, just say hi."
He took in a shaky breath and somberly asked, "Can I go say hi?"
"Sure," I said with a wise fatherly smile.
Tyren opened the hotel room door, leapt into the hallway (with his sister in tow), waved vehemently and shouted, "HI BLACK PEOPLE! BYE BLACK PEOPLE!"
Sometimes one can only shake one's head.