Picture this for me if you will…you are in line at the grocery store and you are lining up your items on the conveyor belt. It’s a typical day, nothing out of the ordinary. Your two year old who has just begun to talk starts chattering to the person in line behind you. You think to yourself how cute she is and are thankful that she’s not pulling things off the shelves. As you hurry to get things out of the cart a few words break into your consciousness and you pause to listen. What did she just say?
 
“You’re chocolate,” your little one exclaims. Curious to see what she is looking at you turn to find an African-American standing behind you in line. Horrified you try to distract her with any little thing you can find and you hope to goodness that the man hasn’t heard her. But no your precious angel is focused on one thing only and she won’t stop saying the word chocolate even after you hand her some actual chocolate.
 
This is based off of a true story, these events actually happened. I can’t tell you how quickly I tried to move out of that line while she smiled sweetly at the man. Thankfully the man was gracious and even laughed along with my daughter. Obviously my daughter had only been using the only point of reference she knew in trying to describe his skin colour but I was completely mortified by the experience.
 
Unfortunately, for all of us these experiences are but a fact of life. You can hide from it all you want but it will inevitably find you. I have heard many countless stories of humiliation via your own offspring and it most often happens in a place where there is no quick escape. Children trap you and then proceed with various forms of humiliation such as asking if an overweight woman is pregnant. Gasp. It’s almost best just to walk away and never speak of it again.
 
It’s quite possible that children were brought into our lives to embarrass us, maybe to punish us for all the pain we caused our own parents during the terrible teens.
 
I wish there was something I could say to help prevent the same humiliation in your life but I can’t as you never know when the “things your children say” will strike again. My advice? As soon as you enter a store look for the quickest escape route to freedom.
 
Kimberly Love
Windsor, ON