Strangers

Back in the late summer, Isaac went through a brief phase of pointing out people he didn't know. While we were staying at the hotel in Santa Fe, for instance, when we passed someone in the hall Isaac would often say something like, "Don't know that person." In the fall we joined a different playgroup, so we met a lot of new people. At one of our first get-togethers with the playgroup, Isaac looked at two of the mothers sitting side-by-side on a park bench, and I guess he realized that he didn't know their names.

The first woman was white with blonde hair, and Isaac pointed at her and said, "Don't know that pink woman." Everyone laughed a little bit, and Sarah introduced herself to him. Then Isaac turned to the second woman, who was African-American, and he pointed at her and said, "Don't know that purple woman." Everyone was quiet for a second, and I was puzzled, and then we all realized what he was doing -- he was using the color of the women's shirts to identify them. Sarah was wearing a pink shirt, and Cornelia was wearing a purple sweatshirt.

He identified strangers by the color of their clothes for a few more weeks -- sometimes it even worked out, like when he said, "Don't know that white woman" about my aunt Lynn, who was wearing a white blouse in addition to actually being a white woman -- before he stopped. I think he was especially excited about colors at that point, and he was noticing them a lot. I mean real colors, not just variations in skin color. He still doesn't seem to notice racial or ethnic differences, although his playmates and their parents are quite diverse. I think developmentally this awareness happens closer to three years of age.

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I thought of this today because after we left the garden store, Isaac said, "I don't know that woman's name." He was talking about the cashier.