Red and yellow, black and white...

One of the first things Hayden started learning was colors. I can recall many handfuls of minutes (for that is how we measure time with Hayden) spent quizzing the little guy on his colors. Perhaps his mastery of the palette is responsible for this post.

One day a few weeks ago, Hayden and I were out somewhere public (I think it was the mall) and he saw a group of people standing in the distance. Upon sighting them, he started pointing at them and saying, "Mickey". I didn't think much of it at the time, and the only thing I saw about them that was different from anyone else was that they were African American (and I was trying to figure out what that had to do with Mickey Mouse, other than the fact that most of his body is black).

Fast forward to last week when I'm picking up Hayden from daycare. It's pretty standard for him to go around and tell everyone goodbye. This time, he told one of his teachers, "Bye, Mickey." Apparently this is what the kids call her and she is of course African American. So a tiny Christmas light goes on in my head and on the way to the hospital, I quizzed him on the skin color of his teachers. It took him a while to figure out what color skin caucasians have (I think we decided on pink), but he came back almost immediately with brown for Mickey, so I'm pretty sure that's the connection.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to explain to Hayden that not everyone with a darker complexion than him is named Mickey. Were this not the case, a back-of-the envelope calculation suggests that about 99.9% of the world's population would be named Mickey. This figure excludes Iceland where it would probably be more like 50%. He takes after his daddy, and I'm about as white as they come.

Edit 05/11/2007 - I checked the roster this morning, and the teacher in question is Nikki. Hayden's Ms and Ns are a little tough to differentiate.