Funny Story About Point of View (long, but hopefully worth the read)

I have been reading posts in the transracial adoption forum for quite a while. My wife and I are caucasian, and we have a 2 1/2 year old African American son named Max who we adopted as an infant. Reading the posts, I have noticed that many of you deal with frequent stares, questions, and the occasional racist comment. We have experienced many of those situations. However, I truly believe that much of it has to do with a lack of understanding. Often, many of the "looks" can be explained by taking another persons point of view. If you look hard enough, you can even find some humor in racial differences, without marginalization. I would like to share a humorous story that illustrates this. My wife and I had decided to take Max to a place called Monkey Joes. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is basically a large room filled with bouncy castles, inflatable slides, and inflatable climbing walls. Max had just turned two, but he has always been a daredevil, so he wanted to climb around the bigger kid area. He was not tall enough to reach the handholds and footholds in the climbing wall, so I had to go with him. Needless to say, this was not a good situation for a full-grown adult. The long maze of tunnels, walls, and slides ended in a long slide followed by a short tunnel to the exit. Max went down the slide, and I followed. To keep kids in the play area, the ceiling of the slide and tunnel is basically a cargo net. Unfortunately for me, it is only about a foot and half high. Once I was down the slide, I was unable to sit up or turn my body around. Being a two year old, Max immediately wanted to go down the slide again. However, instead of exiting and going around, he decided it would be best to climb over me and back up the slide. To make matters worse, four young girls began their decent down the slide, one by one, into the back of my head. My only choice was to crab walk. Because Max was adamant about climbing over me, I had to use my legs to hold him back and guide him towards the end of the tunnel. Finally, I was able to use my feet to push him out the end of the slide and onto a mat. As I exited, I noticed an African American gentleman sitting nearby, intelligently waiting for his kids OUTSIDE of the play area. I began to say hello, when I noticed that he had a look of disgust on his face that I had never seen before. As I pondered what issue he had with me, I realized something. From my point of view, I was gently guiding my beautiful son out of harms way, to the end of tunnel, so he could do it all over again. What this gentleman saw was a middle-aged white man, kicking a small black child out of the end of a children's play gym. As I opened my mouth to explain that Max was my son, Max took off to the entrance of the play area. My only choice was to do what any good father would do. I shrugged my shoulders, and ran after my son.