I got a beef with the whole Pilgrims and Indians thing going on with Thanksgiving.
Get it? Beef? It's meat like a turkey...never mind. Wolfie's glaring at me.
Anyway, Lian's part of this school play/pageant thing and they asked her if she would be Pocahontas.
Yes, Pocahontas. Never mind she was about a hundred years later and about 600miles south of Plymouth. They also wanted the kid playing Squanto to wear a headdress with the most LURID pink, purple, turquoise and sunflower yellow feathers to signify he's a chief. Nevermind that Squanto was never a chief to begin with and wasn't a Plains tribe that wore the long headdresses. Let's just embrace the stereotype and run with it, keep promoting that the natives of this country continue to be second class citizens and an afterthought long after blacks and Hispanics fought and (mostly) received equality a few decades ago.
It's okay to call a sports team the "Redskins" but we can't possibly call them the "Darkies" or the "Wetbacks".
Anyway, off the soapbox before Wolfie strangles me, Lian's all excited to be Pocahontas and demands to wear her dance costume for the play. I am, naturally, horrified and refuse. That dance costume is a ceremonial outfit, not a freaking stage costume for the sick amusement of parents who wouldn't know their nations' history if it bit them on the...Hi Wolfie! No I wasn't going to say anything inappropriate. So I tell Lian 'no'. Okay I used ruder words, I'll admit it. H-E- double hockey sticks was dropped into the sentence.
"Weren't the Dineh thankful, Daddy?" Lian asks me.
I think about it. "Probably not. They were too busy helping the Pueblo burn out the Franciscans, Eta Yazi."
She didn't like that answer at all. I'm in the dog house, not literally mind you because Crius managed to destroy the last three and I won't buy another one. When he needs to be kicked out of the house, he goes in the freaking garage now. But I am now, officially, on Lian's "won't speak to unless spoken to" list.
It's kind of nice. I can watch whatever TV I want because she won't talk to me to wheedle me into her show or complain. I can cook whatever food I want and she has to eat it or go hungry because she won't tell me what she's hungry for. This has only gone on for three days now, but I'm thinking that by after school tomorrow when all the kids have to show up with their costumes and she's wearing a suede leftover Halloween sale costume, things will be okay.
I hope so. Lian not talking to me is rather unnerving. Mainly because now she's talking to Crius (who just looks at her and gives one of his wall shaking woofs) or her stuffed animals, who she also answers for and it's kinda freaking me out.
RH
