My daughter fell off the swing today during her lunch break. She practically, no, actually runs from the classroom in our bonus room to the back yard to swing when she has a break from classes lately. My fear, as someone with spinal cord injury, is that she will not fall, or if she does, that it will be mild. So you can imagine my immediate anxiety when I came in from taking the dog to be groomed only to hear my daughter say, "I need to go to the chiropractor" and my husband saying, "she fell off the swing" at about the same time.
The fall wasn't a bad one with her landing on her hip and back. My husband offered to let me see the video of it which he'd isolated from the footage the camera in our backyard records. I declined but got her in the car as quickly as I could because she needed to because she had a math class in less than an hour.
She grabbed a freshly popped bag of popcorn from the microwave and we jumped in the car. Sidebar: guess who got thirsty and just couldn't wait for some liquid until we got home? Before we entered the doctor's office we had to don masks and I told my daughter to make sure she had her mask under her alien glasses because people would think she looked, "kickass" with them on.
These glasses are odd indeed and came with a KiwiCo kit that my daughter had made which included all the pieces to make an entire alien spacecraft costume—including bizarre-looking alien glasses that make her look like she has large, oval, alien eyes.
My daughter asked me what "kickass" meant as we walked in and then proceeded to tell everyone in the office she was kickass in addition to repeating the word twenty or so times just for good measure. Oops. Our chiropractor adjusted my, "kickass" daughter, saying she'd knocked her pelvis out of alignment and another spot in her mid-back. Otherwise, she was fine. Whew.
When we got back in the car my daughter wanted to know what all the swear words were. She's good about not repeating them even though she knows them but wanted to be sure she had the complete, exhaustive list. She said, "I think I know them all. Can I say them once in the car here?" I told her that would be fine and I would confirm her list. She immediately upped her game by saying, "wait, I want to say them in alphabetical order."
She quickly rattled off the usual suspects with only a minimum gap in time to order them alphabetically. I told her, "you missed D" and she guessed for a bit before I told her it was 'damn' which I knew she knew but had forgotten. Then she asked me the question which has caused me to come home, sit down and write this post now, as opposed to later tonight when the children are in bed.
My daughter said, "I think dad said there was another one that started with 'N'." I told her she was correct, there was another word that started with the letter N, but that it wasn't a curse word, it was an insult, and such a bad one that of all the words people didn't say because they were swear words or rude or offensive words, that one was so bad, people didn't even like to say it, so they referred to it as, "the N-word."
I started at the beginning because at this point we were in a drive-through line to get her some much-demanded liquid and had time before getting home and jumping into math class. I explained the history of slavery and that there was a time when some people believed it was okay to own another person. I talked about how poorly slaves were sometimes treated and that it was a shameful time in the history of our country.
At a later point in time after slaves had been freed, the black people of America decided that "negros" would be how they would like to be referred to, but that some people created a more derogatory version of that word to describe them, and that that word, "nigger" was the "N-word" my husband had meant. I told my daughter some people found the word so despicable, they didn't even like to say it.
After a time, black people asked to be called, "African Americans" and today that's the phrase we use when describing someone of African descent. We might describe their color as 'black' just as we might describe our color as 'white'.
To give her an example, I said, "Edna is black so you would say she's African American or you could describe her as black but you would never call her the N-word. That would be very hurtful to her if you did so." My daughter said ib a surprised tone, "wait, Edna' black?" I told her, "yes, Edna is black." She replied, "how was I supposed to know? I've never seen her."
I didn't show my surprise, but I was very much surprised—my daughter has been seeeing Edna once a week when she came to clean our house since she was born. For four years she was sighted and she had no idea. It reminded me again how just because my daughter had seen at one time, doesn't mean she remembers anything she saw.
The Big Boy Update: My son is playing a game of Minecraft .ith his father that is spanning multiple days. Today, after school, they had some weekday time for an hour as a reward for good behavior. I think they're both liking playing together.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: After I told my daughter Edna was black and she was surprised about it, the next thing she said was, "I love Edna. I love black people." I told her I did too. She then told me how her friends Rayan and Keira were black too which sparked an additional conversation about the difference between African American and Indian people.
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