Kill me now.

I’ve been ruminating quite a bit lately. There is a lot of furor over the president's "Special Olympics" remark on Leno. It was not just a stupid thing to say, but thoughtless and hurtful to a lot of people. On the other hand, he did apologize, which is the best anyone can do when they say something they immediately come to regret.

Yet his situation led me to think on one of my favorite people—ME—and on my many, many verbal misfortunes, upon those times I have said something completely horrible out of thoughtlessness or an ill-contrived attempt at humor, and further, the times I've lived through the pain of karmic justice: the times when one of my many, many children blurt something unfathomable.

It's at these times that, beyond wanting to die or scream "I DID NOT TEACH THIS CHILD TO SAY SOMETHING SO... THAT!!" that I struggle with the best way to guide my kids through such moments. Without making the situation worse. Or the comment repeated. Or the kids getting themselves killed (as it were).

To wit:

Recently my 5-year old saw a neighbor, and after waving to her and her baby-in-stroller, my daughter stated flatly, "Japan lady." Her statement came as an observation, and that small measure of pride 5-year olds take when they say something they believe to be 100% true.

I was stunned. I had no idea how to handle this. My thoughts swirled as so: First, the neighbor is Asian. I doubt that she is Japanese. Simply a subjective—if wholly incorrect—observation. There was no element of negative or positive intention flowing from the 5-year old—simply, a statement of what she believed to be fact. Second, is recognizing another’s ethnicity an inherently bad, neutral, or positive thing? If a child of another ethnicity said hello to me, then called me “white lady,” or “(insert-one-of-my-many-ethnicities-here) lady,” would I be offended? As a member of the majority, can I adequately judge how I would feel if the situation were reversed? Would I even be able to imagine what it would be like to be in an ethnic minority? Third, where did my daughter come to think of Asian people as "Japan” people? How did this even enter into her mind? And finally, what really is the teachable moment here?

The question of the woman’s ethnicity aside, I went for what I perceived as the larger issue at hand. I pulled my daughter aside, privately explaining that pointing out basic observations she notices of people is a generally rude thing to do. Pointing out to me—or anyone—elements of people’s appearances was simply not polite, whether is was discussing hairstyle, or physical features, or clothing styles. There are all kinds of different people in the world, and loudly pointing them out might make people feel uncomfortable. And making people feel uncomfortable about their appearance is generally not nice. However, if she felt the need to tell me something about the way someone looked, she could always quietly, privately talk to me.

I don’t know if this was the correct thing to say or not. I don’t know if this was the right way to deal with this particular moment or not. But truthfully, I had other, larger moments in mind. Like my fear of her pointing out the corpulent, the handicapped, the aged, the young, the overtly-styled, the under-styled. Whatever. Differences in people is like porn: You know it when you see it.  And maybe like porn, thoughts on differences are best kept quiet and hidden under your bed. Okay enough of that metaphor.

What I’m trying to say is, in the hopes of accepting differences in others, all differences, any differences, it’s best not to loudly announce those differences.

How would you have handled it?

(NOTE: In regards to the “Japan lady” comment: We’d gone out for Japanese food the previous weekend. She was equating that the neighbor looked like one of the chefs at the Japanese restaurant, who was identified as Japanese.)