>The Talk. Part One of a Zillion

In my mind, when I teach my children about serious issues like God and death and where babies come from, we’re sitting at the kitchen table, bathed in the warm, filtered light of an after-school special. I’ve carefully thought out my words well in advance and recite them with the practiced ease of an experienced parent. My children nod earnestly, their eyes aglow with new understanding. When I’m done talking, we hug as the background music swells.

In reality, it just doesn’t work out that way. Instead, I find myself bonked over the head with a situational plank, forced to come up with some kind of ready or not, on-the-spot explanation. Take last week.

“Mommy!” three-year-old Punky shouted at me when I showed up to collect her from the YMCA nursery. “There’s a bad boy over there!”

I looked where she was pointing and saw a little boy playing with some toys on a rug. A little boy with a facial deformity.

“He’s not bad, honey, he’s just different,” the nursery worker said to her. I smiled at the woman apologetically, feeling awkward. I didn’t want to agree with her until I’d talked more to Punky. In private. Quickly, I changed the subject and got Punky out of there.

“Punky, you know the little boy in the nursery that you said was bad?” I asked her once we’d gotten in the car.

“Yes.”

“Did he hit you or push you or take your toy away?”

“No.”

“Then why was he bad?”

“He just was.”

“Because of how he looks?”

“Yeah.” Ouch. Suddenly, we were in A Moment, and with achy joints and sweat running down my back from an extra-hard workout, A Moment was the last thing I wanted.

“Um, okay,” I began hesitantly. Think, dammit, think! I told myself. Suddenly, a lightbulb went off in my head. Punky had been watching Disney’s Beauty and the Beast obsessively for the last week. She loved the part at the end when the Beast turned into a prince.

“Okay, so you know how the Beast isn’t very handsome on the outside, and some people are afraid of him and think he’s a monster?”

“Yeah.”

“But is the Beast bad?”

“No!” she laughed. “He’s good.”

“Well, some little boys and girls are that way, too. They look different on the outside, but they’re good on the inside.”

“Oh,” she said thoughtfully.

“And so you should be extra-nice to that little boy, and play with him, because he might be a prince on the inside.”

Punky smiled. “Okay,” she agreed.

I sighed triumphantly. Mission accomplished. Unless she goes back to the nursery and calls him “The Beast.” That would be just my luck.