Was taking a few hours off on Sunday to be with Maya. walked to the spielplatz, and headed to the usual route: trampoline, swing, and then the carousel. We were talking in Hebrew when two girls, maybe five-year-old, approached the carousel.
Maya likes being around older girls. She immediately joined them as they started to push the carousel round and round. One of them pushed Maya, and told her firmly that she is not allowed to play with them. “You are not Deutsch”, she told Maya, “you don’t even speak Deutsch”.
I can really lose it at these times. I ran to my wife and told her about the incident, and she came running and calmly explained to the other girls that there are kids who look different and speak different language, but all I could see is Maya at eight, or 12, or 18, and what I brought her into.
I know that some of you might dismiss it. “It is just a kid”, is a very often used as an excuse. Fine, it is just nice to be in the majority and look into things logically.
I went after the girls and asked to see their parents. If Maya was speaking like that to another girl, I’d appreciate her parents telling me. I told them. They looked confused. “We can assure you that we don’t think or say these things in our house”, they told me. I hate it when people defend themselves without being attacked.
I don’t believe them. I know exactly how I would react if I heard such thing about my daughter. I think that in order to think in such methodological way at such a young age, one must be exposed to it from his/her own very close surroundings.
Later, when two American mothers from New York left my restaurant, one of their child told her brother (they were five and three): “people here are so light-skinned”.
