Thursday, March 22, 2012

Salt and Pepper/Brown and White

We've been so lucky this past week to have Rachel home from college for spring break. I'm quite positive the longer she lives away the more culture shock she experiences when she comes home. The boys ask and ask about her the whole time between visits, then when she gets home they completely ignore her.....little brothers!

They figured out she was leaving soon and that has generated a lot of meal time conversations. You know those types of conversations that you know are going to generate a lot more than what they started out to be. Below is one of those conversations.

We have to greatly limit the salt intake for Lucas and Eli. I think they'd lick a salt block if we had one in the kitchen. We've explained that too much salt is not good for them and that it can lead to blood pressure and heart problems.....their understanding of this?.....Salt is bad for Filipinos. If you eat a meal with us and pick up the salt shaker you will be bombarded with their reasoning of salt intake.

How exactly limiting salt intake moved into an ethnicity education is beyond me but Eli was definitely the liaison of the conversation and took it upon himself to discuss the Asian/Caucasian mix of our family.

You probably should understand that he has no concept what so ever of this topic. He knows he is Asian we've always said we were white (easier than Caucasian). His wording is, "I'm brown, you all are white." Yep. His next leap in this conversation (he really does know better) was to pick up the salt shaker and proclaim, "I eat too much salt I will be white." Ummmm, no. I think we missed the part about blood pressure and heart disease, reviewed that part again and tried to be responsible and appropriate to topic. His next move was to look at Rachel, hand her the pepper and say, "Here, use the pepper then you will be brown like me." Sometimes a parent's best course of action when asked to explain the mysteries of the universe should be......"because I said".

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