Katie, facing backwards, rocked herself wildly with one knee on the rocker and one foot on the floor. Her daddy had just gotten home from work and asked how her day was. As if suddenly uncorking what she'd bottled up for when Will was home to ask that exact question, she stopped rocking, stood strait up and announced, "This morning a girl in my class asked, 'Where did you get your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack? In the BOYS' department?'"
Reenacting her role in the conflict, Katie demonstrated how she swung her head around dramatically, looked the girl straight in the eye, and said, hand-on-hip, "I got it at Target. In the BACKPACK department. Where they have backpacks for BOYS and GIRLS and EVERYONE."
Will and I looked at each other and smiled. I turned to Katie and asked, "What did the girl say after that?"
Katie dropped her hand from her hip, then flung it into the air, open-palm-up. "Nothing," Katie said, smiling wide. "She had nothing to say after that."
A moment of sexism and bullying, swiftly destroyed by the nineteen smart words of a seven-year-old girl with a flair for fabulous gesticulations.
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