Our little handyman

Jacob told on me this morning. He told dad as he was leaving the house that I poured water on his head. Then today he told me he didn't want water on his head anymore. I told him that he should listen and not sass back. He's also been threatened with getting his mouth washed out with liquid soap, getting his worms thrown in the garbage and his deer antlers taken away from him.
Today Jacob decided to fix our window seat. There are two holes in it that need some wood putty. Jacob made his own wood putty. I saw him bring in a little tea cup filled with water and thought nothing of it. Then I walked out of the room for a little bit and came back to him mixing his McDonald's french fries with water and putting it in the holes in the window seat. What an inventive boy making his own putty. I told him that dad would have to get the wood putty out and water makes wood weak and rots.

Next, we're in the car going to our bi-weekly trip to Sam's club. I'm stopping at a stop sign looking around for traffic. Jacob exclaims, "Why does he have a brown nose and is black skin?" In a matter of 1.2 seconds I thought all of this - first, my eyes widened - alot! Then I thought, Is he talking about a person? Then I thought, "What the hell?" Then I thought, "why would he ask this question now?" We've seen people of all different races before and this never came up.

So, I turned my head and saw that he was talking about a black bird and thought, "Whew, its just a bird." And then I thought, "I have to go to my library and find my books about differences in peoples and culture and we'll read through them again." And THEN I thought, "Am I so worried that he'll point out people who are different than my family and then I'll have to explain why or that he'll ask the question to the person?" And THEN I thought, "What am I worried about?"

In dear old Appleton, Wisconsin the population is about 95% German, Dutch, Irish and maybe a few Polish. The other 5% is African American, Spanish and Hmong. We are so homogeneous that its really easy to raise children without ever knowing there is a whole different world out there. Our idea of crossing identity lines is a Lutheran marrying a Catholic. Are you gettin' my drift?