Very rarely do I share photos of my spawn on my blog. Not because I think someone might find them and kill them, but because I think some kiddie fiddling pervert out there might look at those pictures and masturbate to them. But I have to share the unintentional White Power odyssey of our Halloween.
When the kid were all costumed-up and ready to trick-or-treat, I implored my husband to take the children out to the front stoop and get a picture of them. I was imagining something like this:
See that? That is the classic Halloween photo. Joyless. Hands at their sides like they’re in a police line up. The agony of being made to pose for a photo, while up and down the street children caper happily, collecting up all the treats. But not you, Chippy. You’re going to stand on that stoop until we get a photo of you with your eyes open.
Confession time: this is from a second set of pictures. The first set…
This requires set up, in order to not look like a hate crime. If you are unfamiliar with Super Mario Bros. (or Aspergers, since that’s a large component to blame for this), Mario is usually posed like so:
So, being an expert on all things Mario, and dedicated to realism in cosplay (see also: Aspergers), my son decided he should replicate this pose for the photos:
Perhaps if he’d not been standing so rigidly to attention… maybe, it’s just the mustache. But it looked a lot less like this:
And a lot more like this:
Then, things got worse. You see, my daughter, who turns three today, is always looking to her older brother, perhaps misguidedly, to learn how to behave in crippling social situations, such as getting your photo taken.
So now, I have two children heil-ing on my front stoop, as my entire small town filters by, skipping our house, I might add, despite the fact that we were clearly giving out treats.When my husband, my lazy, lazy, husband, thought, “Ah, fuck it,” and brought them back inside, thank god I had the presence of mind to look at the pictures. There are eight of them. Eight photos in which, captured for posterity, my children are unintentionally giving a white power salute. Husband took the kids back outside and took pictures to my exact specifications: no hands in the air. No hands anywhere. Just keep your arms at your sides. Pretend you’re being booked for embezzlement.
Hope you all had a safe, happy, Halloween, totally unmarred by any reminder of the existence of Adolf Hitler.
I thought the sig heil had the hand flattened, not fisted. So there is potential that it wasn't white power, but building up to epic Mario power.
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My earlier comment was so riddled with errors courtesy of autocorrect that I have to fix it.
I should know by now to never read your blog while rocking my baby. There's no way to quietly guffaw.
As promised – my gifted girl's version of alienating folks. I have two kids, one 14 yo son with high functioning autism and a 12 yo girl in the gifted program. This occurred when she was 8 and in 3rd grade:
My daughter's 3rd grade teacher and I requested that my daughter (DD) be tested for the gifted program based on her standardized test scores, her class grades and her absolute boredom with 3rd grade. The gifted support lead tested her then passed her on to the school psychologist – henceforth identified as SP.
He had to split DD's testing over two days because DD absolutely did NOT want to be tested. Over the two days she referred to SP as “evil”, “the devil”, “torturing me” and I think there may have been a “Satan's Spawn” thrown in there somewhere. She pretended to sleep, asked to see the nurse 9 times and was a general pain in the butt. Fortunately, SP had a very good sense of humor.
After DD's IEP, where the results of testing were revealed – and yes DD was indeed gifted – SP asked my husband and I to stay behind after the meeting. He wanted to tell us about an episode during testing without the rest of the team listening in. Oh, boy – this had to be good. And, as expected, it was.
One portion of the test given was what SP referred to as “the gibberish” portion. The child is given a string of letters and asked to pronounce them as if they were a word. In demonstration, SP pointed to the letters “D W E B I T” and said “dwebit” – sounds kind of like an insult like “you, you dwebit you”. Here's the rest:
DD: “Ni**er” (black slang)
SP: “Excuse me?”
DD: “Ni**er!”
SP: “I'm not following.”
DD: “You know, NI**ER”
SP: ????
DD: “(sigh) I was reading a book about Martin Luther King Jr. In his day, ni**er was used as an insult, but it sounds like a gibberish word. See? Ni**er.”
*Facepalm* The reason SP brought it to our attention is that he wanted to give us a heads up on how to work with her. His opinion was that people with IQs like my daughter's tend to jump in conversations, figuring that everyone else is making the same connections they are. To make it better, my sweet, loving husband put his arm around me, smiled, and told SP “I have *NO* idea what that's like…”
Hope you at least got a laugh… :o)