Saturday, April 9, 2011

Looking Forward to the Day She Doesn't Have to Color In the Lines

Sometimes I let Caroline skip school and instead bring her to school with me. She loves UNM, I love hanging out with her, and my professors always make her welcome. It's a treat we indulge in once in awhile.

Yesterday, between my morning and afternoon classes I took her for lunch at the Student Union. We bought our food and went outside to sit at the tables in the plaza so we could soak up the sun and listen to the music; there is always music at UNM, sometimes guitar players or a capella singers and sometimes an actual DJ playing for some charity or other. This time the music was provided by a DJ from the Queer-Straight Alliance. They were drawing attention to one of their favorite causes of late: anti-bullying. So, as one can imagine, the plaza was filled with loud, bass-heavy club beats and techno, and there were a lot of colorfully dressed, colorful-haired dancers dancing in unison all over the plaza and trying to pull passersby in to dance with them. It was a good time, in short, and very entertaining.

But I'm used to seeing this. It's rare to walk on my campus and not hear music of some sort, or to hear speakers on megaphones drawing attention to this or that social or political issue. I don't think much of it anymore, other than to think how fortunate I am to go to such a colorful and relaxed school where the majority of the students are concerned about the world at large.

Caroline isn't used to it, though. She took one look at the dancers with their feathers, beads, short-shorts and exuberant attitudes and said, "Mom, your school isn't ANYTHING like mine. You're like free-range chickens!"

"Free-range chickens?"

"Yes! At my school, we can practically hear the scraping of the metal blades that are coming to grind up the chicks that put a foot out of line!"

Sometimes she surprises me with her astute observations, and I couldn't be more pleased that she's not fooled into thinking that elementary school is how all of her life should be. A willing-conformist, this kid is not.