All the colors of the rainbow....

So today I was going to write about the other night at dinner when Joey claims he busted me for looking some dude up and down. I was just looking at his t-shirt, but Joey totally claims I gave the guy the up and down glance. I would like to say it was just instinctual but I really was looking at his shirt. So instead I am writing about the topic of diversity. I was reading one of my favorite blogs today, Girls Gone Child and a post about diversity and parenthood.

So here is my story. I grew up in a tiny itty bitty area of California. It is basically hundreds and hundreds of citrus and avocado orchards with houses thrown in here and there. 95% of the population was the farm workers and their families. Which meant that the little school that I attended was almost completely filled with little Mexican kids with a sprinkling of a white kid here and there. (What's up Matthew!) I loved going to school there and it cultivated my love of school, education and all things academic, but it lacked greatly in diversity.

When you grow up with everyone the same, you walk around in a happy little cloud not knowing any different or any better.

Then we moved.

This new town was, well an actual town. A mostly upper-middle class town. We had neighbors and lived in a neighborhood. The move happened right when I was to start high school. So I started a high school in a brand new place that was so freakin HUGE compared to where I had gone. Here is where my lack of diversity kicked my ass. I met a girl named Ami (who would later become my Boo and the air that I breathe). Now Ami was short like me, brown skinned with dark hair and brown eyes, like me. So my sheltered ass thought she was Mexican. I really and truly did. I don't remember how or when but I learned that Ami was not Mexican but was Indian. Her parents were from India and she was brown, but she was not Mexican. My brain exploded.

Now I must admit that I did not think too much about diversity when we put The Phi in school but when I look around her classroom there are a lot of different kinds of beautiful faces looking back at me. The Phi herself is a little mixed breed. One of her favorite friends is Chinese and speaks Chinese and The Phi thinks this is the coolest thing ever. Her Uncle Tom is Cambodian and The Phi adores him (maybe because he gives her free grilled cheese sandwiches from his shop). I am very happy about this not because I want her to be alert to different nationalities or ethnicity's. In fact it is the opposite. I want it to not even be a thought in her head. I want people of all races to just be a part of her everyday life and not something to even give a second thought to.