Out of the mouths of babes........

I wanted to share a couple of observations from a friend of mine's 8 year old daughter. In these times it is often hard to find much uplifting. The news is unrelentingly grim it seems and today is no different than yesterday. I was going to post another 'What Have We Learned this Week' but it was so full of people being arrested for killing their children, the triple dipping recession, the state of Belarus, football hooligans in Ukraine and Poland developing new forms of  violent racist fascism in the name of sport and in the UK corruption and moral decay left right and centre right, I thought I would post something that made me smille and raised a faint flickering little flame of hope in this tired old heart of mine.

Now my oldest friend, his father is from Trinidad and his daughter's mother is one of the most beautiful black women it has been my fortune to count amongst as friends. Now this is a bright young girl and she has been given an enquiring mind that brings her parents, as well as their friends, much joy. She is given to the sort of imagination that one time recently she pointed a gun shaped finger at her Dad and made the shooting noise beloved of all small children. When expressing concern that he had, of course, been shot by this imaginary gun she merely replied,

"Love Gun"!

We have, I guess, been waiting for the subject of racism to rear it's ugly head  for at primary school it has been noted often I believe, that little children have to be taught racism, mostly by their parents and that they play together with little to no self consciousness about such tiresome things. But come forward it has like so much scum on foul water and a little boy in her class had said something to the effect he didn't like black people and now the school were brilliant in dealing with this and had called her father to let him know. When asked by her concerned and angry father how she had coped with this form of bullying, she replied

 "I just went to a happy place in my head and ignored it"