You Indian!

Little Beauty has begun name-calling. It started when she told her little brother, who was hitting himself in the face with his tiny fists, "Don't hit yourself in the face you silly Indian!"

As she repeated this phrase over and over again, as is the tendency of a three-year-old, my husband and I looked at each other, wondering where she got the term Indian and what exactly she meant when she called her little brother one.

The mystery was solved a few nights later when I was washing her hair in the tub and some water got into her eyes. With her little eyes squeezed shut she shouted at me, "You got water in my eyes - you Indian!" Suddenly, it sounded familiar to me, and then I got it. What she meant was - you idiot.

Sadly, idiot is a term I'm fond of and obviously I throw it around a bit too much. Note to self: watch the idiot ejections. All I said to LB in the tub was that it wasn't nice to call names and I made her apologize. I didn't correct her. I didn't tell her that what she meant to say was idiot not Indian. Maybe I should have. It's probably worse for her to throw around what some consider a racial epithet rather than an ordinary insult. I'll have to think more about that one.

Then we were at the park the other day when LB discovered some graffiti on her beloved rock climbing wall. She said, "Mama, look what some dummies did. They're ruining our park!" I agreed with her and told her she was right - and I didn't say anything about her using the word dummies, mainly because I agreed with her and thought she was right. Moreover, she wasn't using the word to be mean. It was simply and adjective - an astute one at that.