Real People Trapped in Little Bodies
Reflection can be a powerful tool. Being born in the late 50’s my grammar school years, as they were called back then, were in the decade of the 60’s. This was the era of the original “Hot Wheels Cars” and full size “G.I. Joes”. Real metal “Tonka” trucks ruled the world. Cartoons like Yogi Bear, The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour and Space Ghost were some of the choice Saturday morning TV offerings. It was also the era of “children are to be seen and not heard.”
It’s ironic how as children we’ll “pick things up” without even realizing we did it. Often its not until later in life we begin to see what we picked up and are confronted by it, sometimes rather starkly. It was here in one such moment that the wisdom of the 60’s crashed headlong into the heart of Jesus.
Annie, our first-born, was three-ish. This made Aaron our second born infant-ish. We were out on a family excursion with the intent to buy Annie a new pair of shoes. Now this was nothing new or unusual, we had bought shoes for the kids before. What made this outing different was that Annie was involved in picking them out for herself. A fact I truly became aware of only too late.
Annie and Marm (Martha’s nickname given to her by her nephew when he was little) were having a ball. They were jabbering together about this shoe and that one while moving freely up and down the aisle. Boxes littered the floor. Most had one shoe teetering sideways within while the other one was laying where it had been dropped some 2 to 3 feet away. This was shopping at its finest for Annie. She was having a blast.
I too was shopping, but with much less enthusiasm. I was thinking more along the line of finding an appropriately sturdy pair and then going home rather soon. She was, after all, only 3 so it really didn’t matter too much which pair we bought. This should be simple. I walked over to the girls with Aaron in tow in the stroller and showed the ladies my offering. Annie wrinkled up her nose without hesitation. These definitely were not for her. I was insistent about my choice and foisted them on them both rather sternly.
“ These are good shoes,” I insisted. “ They will wear well and are a nice brown color too.” This all seemed more than reasonable to me. I was having a hard time understanding all of the fuss.
“They’re ugly!”, Annie stated flatly, “and I don’t like them.”
I looked at Marm for the obvious support I thought she should lend me, but was startled by the look I saw in her eyes. Now I was really confused and was becoming more frustrated. I was thinking to myself that this isn’t that hard to do. Just pick out a pair, show them to Annie, she’ll be grateful and like them, and we all go home.
I expressed these sentiments to the both of them and was once again met with resistance. Annie wanted a different pair she had selected herself. In fact she was actually trying to decide between two different pairs she had picked out. By now I was getting hot around the ears. I thought we had come to buy shoes, not shop for them.
I certainly wasn’t thinking that Annie actually had an opinion about them herself. And, as painful as it is to say, that what she wanted was as important as what I wanted. I was turning the outing into a misery. I was crushing the joy out of my daughter. I could see it in her face, and I was lost as to what to do next. My default setting from the sixties was failing me badly.
It was here that Marm pulled me aside and gave me that look a wife gives to her husband when he’s being dumb. Then, thankfully, she brought me up to speed. Even though my daughter was only three at the time, she certainly had opinions and desires like everyone else. “Everyone else” meaning adults. Those opinions and desires MATTER. Sadly, I had left no room for Annie to be Annie. No room for her to make her own choices. I wanted what I wanted plain and simple. I wanted her to be seen but not heard.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know better at the time, and honestly, it didn’t take too long for me to remember that this was not the heart of Jesus when it came to kids. Jesus told the adults of his day to let the children come to him and to stop hindering them. In other words; back off people, the kids count too. The lesson learned that night was simple, and it laid the groundwork for a statement that Marm and I use often in regard to children. They are indeed … “real people trapped in little bodies.”
Curls & Capes 