My remarkable color-blind daughter. Everyone's remarkable child

My daughter is quite good at math. When she was nine years of age, she could explain to you why, despite the fact that Pluto passed inside the orbital plane of Neptune once every "Pluto year", the celestial bodies would never actually collide.

What was striking about that was that she also still believed in Santa Claus. The juxtaposition of her understanding of solar system physics and the myth that reindeer could fly was remarkable, not to mention the 800 year-old Santa, the billion presents, the squeezing down the chimney thing, and so on.
It was the pairing of adult intellect and child-like judgment.

She's pretty good with electronics too. Handy with a camera, she got hold of a six-hour tape for our video camera and announced she was going to capture Santa Claus coming down the chimney with the presents to finally, finally, put proof to the story that Santa exists.

So, I hurried out and secretly rented a Santa Clause outfit.

Late Christmas Eve, my daughter placed the camera on a high shelf, taking in the entire chimney breast end of the room.
The -record- button was pressed.

When the kids had all gone to bed and I knew they were asleep, I put on the Santa suit, complete with boots, beard, glasses and gloves. To disguise my familiar countenance, I wore a few layers of extra clothes under it. Creeping in from the deck, I walked into full view of the camera, but never did I face the camera or give away any angle that would betray who I really was. Carefully, and with the faked walk of an older person, I brought in the presents from the deck one by one, each time being very careful about what the camera could see, sometimes walking sideways or slowly backwards to keep my cover. With the job done, I left the living room by the same door out to the deck and re-entered the house by the front door. I deliberately left a white glove behind and headed off to bed.

All three kids had forgotten about the camera until perhaps an hour after they had opened up their presents. With low expectations, my daughter fast-forwarded from the beginning through the tape to see if any secrets lay within. Sure enough, the sped-up movements of a big fellow dressed in red and white raced back and forth across the screen.

The excitement was palpable as her two younger brothers came to watch.
Santa, captured on tape!
They played it over and over until their eyes got tired of it. It was the biggest thing that happened that day.

That's some background. Here is the story I really wanted to tell:
(names and venues changed to protect the innocent)

About the same time, my daughter asked me one day if I could, in addition to picking her up to bring her home, drop one of her ballet friends, Sarah, back to her own house after Friday night ballet.
I agreed of course, and asked her to remind me who Sarah was. My daughter replied "you know, the girl who was also in my French class last year".

"Hmmmnnnn..." I puzzled. "I can't remember a Sarah in your French class".

"Dad, she's the girl who played the violin at that concert last year".

"Sorry, I still don't know who you are talking about" I said.

"Her father is a pilot. You talked with him at the school BBQ".

And so on. I could not, for the life of me, work out who this young girl was. I couldn't put a face to the name.

To clarify her point, my daughter ran upstairs to get her class photo from the previous school year. She came downstairs again, put the photo on the kitchen table and pointed to one of the girls in the photos.
"THAT's Sarah", she said.

She pointed to the only African American -- of of 22 -- child in the photograph. To me, born way back in 1960, a black person is...well...obvious among a class of white people.
But it never occurred to my daughter, while trying to explain to me who Sarah was, to say she was black. My daughter thought of Sarah as a violinist, a French speaker, a ballerina, a daughter of an airline pilot, but she somehow forgot the color of her friend's skin.
That is what people mean when they say we need a color-blind society.

Here's a test.

Write down a list of five random people in the office. In a second column, write the color of their skin, and in a third column, write the color of their eyes, and in the last column, write "left" for left-handed or "right" for right-handed.

I'll bet you get the name and the skin color down without a second thought, and you struggle to remember eye color whether they are left or right handed, even though you've seen it all.

When we all get to the stage where you have to think hard to remember the color of someone's skin, then we'll have equality.
The fact that you and I are saying to ourselves "that just isn't possible" shows how far we have to go to get there.