Exploring Her World
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
s it just me, or is there something off here? I’d like your thoughts on my little tale.
The story begins with a little girl at Zizi’s daycare center. This cute youngster is in the toddler room and looks to be between 18 months and 2 years old. I’ll call her Heidi.
Most days I see Heidi as I pass the toddler play area on my way to Zizi’s room. She always walks over to me, touches my leg, and says, “hi.” As she doesn’t do this to everyone who passes by, I’ve assumed that because we share the same skin color, she kinda gravitates to me. Or maybe it has nothing to do with it. But I always notice her because there aren’t a huge number of black kids in the center. And she is such a little doll.
So one day I’m walking out with Zizi and I see Heidi reaching into the large trash bin outside the center. I didn’t notice any parents around at first, so I told her, “Heidi. Come out of the trash can. We don’t touch the trash. It’s dirty. Yuck!” She looked back at me and smiled.
Then her mother stepped forward. I was a little startled because while I expected to see a sista, Heidi’s mom is white. I assumed then that Heidi was adopted because her coloring was not that of the usual biracial child, but who knows. Not that it matters.
Anyway, her mother smiles at me and says, “It’s OK. Heidi’s just exploring her world.”
And I think to myself, “but does this exploration have to include the damn trash can?”
Now I know that blacks have a tendency to be a bit neurotic about germs. I grew up with crazy public bathroom rituals, and was taught that if you “get somebody’s germs, you’ll die.” So you can see why I didn’t want Heidi playing in a trash can. I then decided to check in with AdoringHusband about whether I was tripping by not wanting Heidi to explore her world in the trash can.
It wasn’t until after I recounted the story to him that I realized that blacks were not the only cultural group who were a little nutty about germs. My Jewish husband was also raised with a similar, if not more severe, fear of germs.
“Exploring her world?” he inquired, astounded by my tale. “There’s nothing in a damn trash can that needs to be explored by a child! The very fact that it is trash makes it not worthy of exploration! Our child will not be exploring her world in the damn trash can!”
I decided to check in with my adoption support group about this trash can exploration. Everyone there (all black save for AdoringHusband) were aghast at the image of this little child digging in a public trash can.
Now I don’t know for sure that this is totally a cultural difference in this white mother’s comfort at her daughter’s exploring a trash can or whether this was something unique to this mother in particular. I do know that when I went away to college, I noticed that the white students did behave a little differently when it came to sharing their germs. They would stick their hands into the salad bar and remove food and pop it into their mouths. (Ugh!) They would pick up the entire uncut loaf of bread with their bare hands, sniff it, then cut a piece for themselves and leave the rest. (I don’t know where their hands have been!) They sat directly on the toilet (!) and never used shower shoes in the grimy shower stalls. Clearly they were not told that if they get someone’s germs they would die.
Even now I see people breaking off half the doughnut and leaving the other half in the box…as if I’m going to eat the other half after some random person has touched it. I see no handwashing after a trip to the bathroom. And then there is the reaching into the trash can to retrieve something (and sometimes eating that something). And I still come to the conclusion that they were taught something much different than me about the danger of germs.
So let me as you, my friends, whether there really is no big deal about a toddler exploring her world in the trash can, or do you find it as repulsive as I do?