Brighten Your Day

I had never expected such an answer from my son.

I was 28 at the time and my son had just been admitted into Madison Lakes Elementary, and was sitting on a park bench with me, telling me all about his friends there, all of the teachers... He was extremely excited, I could tell. Looking up into the cloudy blue sky while I listened to him ramble, I was having a hard time thinking of questions to ask him about his new school. Probably because he was answering every single one of them before I even asked them.

Being in America, there were people of many different races and nationalities that lived here, so I decided to ask him about those people there. He loved geography, and if he saw someone who had a different accent or anything of that matter, he would ask them where they were from. It was embarrassing for me, I thought he was being rude and didn't realize it. But the people would always smile and tell him where, whether it be the UK, China, you name it. Afterwards, he would get into his booster seat in my car and demand that I take him to the library so that he could learn about those places. I would always oblige, giving him every bit of knowledge he craved. He would even tell me fun facts, things that I had no clue about. He was familiar with the word 'foreigner', even though he had no idea what it meant. I sighed and spoke.

"So, David, are there any foreigners at your school?" He looked at me with the biggest smile I had ever seen, swinging his legs back on forth on the bench.

"No, Daddy. Just kids."