Do Not Mess With My Rainbow Boys

I’m in the Chicken Pie Shop, I’m in the grocery, I’m waiting to get shots for my boys and this is how it goes (No joke.  It goes like this all the time.):

Uninformed Human: Your boys!  They all look so different!  Are they brothers?!?

Me [inwardly rolling eyes and sighing]: Yes.

Uninformed Human: Well, are they all yours?!?

Me [again, sighing]:  Yes.

Uninformed Human: Okay but do they all have the same dad?!?

Me [dejectedly hanging my head at the moron-ness of a great deal of humans who live in society today]:  Yes.

This is for the server at the Chicken Pie Shop and for the checkout dude at the grocery and for the nurse (even though she should know wayyyy better) at the clinic where I took my boys for their flu shots:

I have some things to tell you that will maybe enlighten your tiny little minds, then I have some questions.  First, the enlightenment:  For quite some time now in our country and, you know, on the entire planet, people of different ethnicities have been having babies together.  My husband’s mother is from the Philippines and he’s half Asian (whatever that means) and he has dark hair and gorgeous olive skin.  My ancestors are from the cold parts of Europe where everyone has blonde hair and blue eyes and broad shoulders.  And guess what!  We’re totally allowed to get married and make babies!  We don’t have to be even remotely the same color and we’re totally allowed to do that! (!!!)

What that means for you, tiny-minded people, (and I know this might be tricky for you to comprehend, but please just try) is that my children do not all look the same.  Oliver has dark hair and the aforementioned gorgeous olive skin of his daddy.  Hudson is blonde with skin so pale it glows and his eyes are icy blue.  Grady is a caramel boy, with hair, eyes, and skin that are all the same delicious golden hue.  They are my rainbow boys.  The fact that they all look so different is beautiful to me because my husband and I made them and we are different and I think that’s really cool.

And now we will go back to the questions.  I want you to really think about them, O Chicken Pie Shop/grocery store/nurse people, ye of the miniscule brains, because  they will maybe change the way you behave the next time you encounter a family like mine.  (And you will.  We are everywhere.  Get used to it.)  I will space them out and put little stars next to them so you can take your time and really think.  Please.  Please, think.

*How do you think my dark-haired boy feels when people gawk and tell him he doesn’t look like his blonde brothers for the forty-third time?  Remember, he’s eleven.  How might an eleven-year-old boy feel about that? 

*And while we’re discussing feelings, let’s talk about how I feel when you ask if all the children to whom I gave birth and sacrificed a career and a huge amount of sleep and sanity to raise are all actually mine?  If you must know, it only hurts my feelings the tiniest little bit.  Your questions mostly have the effect of being suuupper annoying.  I’m trying to raise a semi-large herd of boys here.  It’s REALLY hard. I do not have the time or patience to answer your blatantly nosy and obnoxious questions. 

*I wonder if you’ve ever thought about how truly ignorant you appear to be when you ask your Uninformed Human Questions?  I mean I’m sure you’re really nice and everything, but when you ogle my children and your eyes glaze over in your feeble attempts to understand basic genetics, you do not look like you’re operating with a full set of hamsters in your wheel. 

*This last question is the Most Important One, the one I want you to consider and then consider again:  What if all of these boys weren’t technically mine?  What if one or all of them were adopted?  What if one of them was a foster kid who I just rescued from a gawd-knows-what-kind-of-horrific life?  I’ll tell you what.  That one little boy would feel your words like nasty little knives, stabbing him in the parts of his heart that were already broken.  

Chicken Pie Shop/grocery/nurse people, I sure hope this makes a difference.  I hope you remember these questions the next time you see my rainbow boys (or anybody else’s rainbow babies) out in public. In fact, maybe print this out and laminate it and memorize it so that next time, instead of asking your usual Uninformed Human Questions, you might say this to yourself, “Oh look.  There’s a family.  They don’t look like each other but they sure are beautiful.  That is one beautiful family.”

*Post Script:  I’m aware that my tone is a tad aggressive in this piece and that I have done some name-calling.  Also I am aware that name-calling isn’t the best manners, but guess what:  people are messing with me and with my lovely children and I’m super tired of it.  If you don’t want to be called tiny-minded, don’t have a tiny mind.  Expand that brain of yours.  It feels good.