When it pays to stick to your guns

ME:  "Let's go do X today."

KIDS:  "Noooo, we don't want to do X, even though we have no idea what X is.  We'd rather stay home and do Y like always."

ME:  "But we can do Y any day.  X is only happening today.  Let's go do X."

KIDS:  <Whine.  Drag feet.  Mope.  Howl.  Grumble.  Bleat.>**

ME:  "Besides, X will be fun and educational.  Trying new things builds—"

KIDS:  "No, Dad, don't say that word!"

ME:  "—character.  Now get dressed, we're going."

KIDS:  <see **>

We go do X.  The kids have a fabulous time and even ask me if we could please stay a bit longer.  Of course, they have forgotten our conversation and neglect to thank their prudent father for overruling their prejudiced and groundless opposition to X earlier that morning.  I don't mind, though.  The smiles on their faces, the knowledge that I have given them a unique, enlightening experience, my relief that X was a success when it could very well have flopped (and there have been some flops), are gratifying enough.

By now this pattern is so familiar that I can encode it with variables.  X has been concerts, hikes, street carnivals and day camps.  Today, though, it was a recorder competition played by youth ensembles from around Salzburg.  One group performed a fabulous 5-recorder arrangement of The Bare Necessities.  One 4th grade boy as part of his act played two recorders at once, one in each hand.  He wore a Transformers t-shirt to match, perhaps to underscore his virtuosity in baroque music.  

Vanessa, our budding recorder enthusiast, stayed for the last few acts while I led a tiring Bettina out to the lobby to read her some books we'd brought along "just in case".  This unplanned solo act itself drew a crowd of eager pre-school-aged listeners who were in the lobby for the same reason we were.  I hadn't meant to start a reading circle, but I rode the tide and read to the whole group, drawing as many smiles from their parents as from them.  See, aren't I glad I did X?

What does 'ugly' mean, Daddy?

I was taken aback when Bettina asked me this at the bus stop one day. Seeing how often in children's literature we read of ugly witches and ugly step-sisters (but never ugly wizards or ugly step-brothers), I marvelled that my 5-year-old didn't know the meaning of this word. I was about to define it for her in the usual fairy tale sense, but thought better of it. In the cruel world of elementary school, the word "ugly" is almost always used to describe a person. And in the fairy tale logic we all grew up with, that means that the reviled person is also evil. Indeed, how many hideous mermaids or ravishing sea witches do we read about? Glenda the Good Witch of the North said it best: "Only bad witches are ugly." And Dorothy, with her liberal Kansas upbringing, just stood there and took that?

Maybe we can fix this fallacy, one kindergardener at a time. It's a dangerous thought, and one that would positively wreck our economy, but what if no one ever commented on, reacted to, or even thought about people's appearances? What if we reserved the words "beautiful" and "ugly" to judge people's thoughts, words and deeds? What if—

"Daddy!"

"Hmm?"

"Didn't you hear me?! I SAID, what does ugly mean?"

"Oh, sorry, sweetie, I got distracted. C'mere, I'll show you what ugly means. You see the cigarette butts and trash around this bus stop? They make the bus stop look ugly."

She bought it. And now we must reinforce it. From now on at at story time we will speak of Cinderella's poorly raised step-sisters; of intelligent princesses who marry thoughtful princes after a long, discerning courtship; of monsters and sea witches who are simply ill-mannered and who just might, with a bit of empathy and constructive feedback from the rest of us, learn to be pleasant, productive members of medieval or oceanic society.