Big Daddy Gouda

 

I had just finished reading Aidan a chapter in his new book, Eragon. It was a school night and it was getting late.

Aidan asked his mother if I could stay a little while longer. Keely granted us 15 minutes as long as we did something constructive. She suggested I help Aidan with his spelling words, as she went next door to visit her parents.

Aidan showed me the routine. He gave me the list of 15 words. I sat across from him at the table. First I would say each word and he would spell it out. He spelled every word correctly but one. He left the O out of ‘people’. An honest mistake for a second grader.

After he was finished spelling all the words, I was then to go down the list, read each word, and he would use it in a sentence.

INSIDE – “Since it was raining I had to play INSIDE.”

SLIDE - “When the road is slippery the cars SLIDE.”

PRIDE - “Uncle Walt takes PRIDE in his newspaper work.” (Although this isn’t always the truth, my eyes welled up when I heard Aidan say it.)

I was very impressed with Aidan’s work. However thing’s got interesting when we arrived at the next spelling word.

BROWN – “My friend Christian has a BROWN wiener,” Aidan said, casually.

I froze. Before I could say anything, Aidan must have taken notice of the shocked expression on my face.

“Well he does,” Aidan said.

“Yeah, I know dude,” I said, well aware that Aidan’s best school buddy was African American. “But you shouldn’t say things like that.”

By this point my voice was cracking and I had to bite my bottom lip as it began to shake. I told Aidan to keep looking over his spelling words while I made a quick phone call.

I got up from the table, opened the glass sliding door and excused myself to the back porch. I darted to the corner where I couldn’t be seen.

For the next two minutes I laughed so hard I nearly peed my pants. No noise was coming out of my mouth. Yeah, it was that kind of laughter. I twice attempted to go back inside but every time I saw Aidan sitting at the table, looking over his list, I’d have to go back to the corner and laugh some more.

I knew that Aidan had used the spelling word correctly and in his 7-year-old mind he was simply pointing out a fact: that his brown skinned friend had a brown wiener. I suppose it was the innocence that was so amusing to me. I knew that if I laughed in front of him, it would only encourage him and turn something that he wasn’t thinking twice about into the topic of conversation on the school bus the next morning.

After five minutes I composed myself and went back inside to continue the lesson. I was able to get through it without another breakout. I knew there would be plenty of time for laughing later.

I laughed the whole way home.

This entry was posted on January 8, 2009 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Adventures in Aidan Sitting, Stories . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.