I recall my step mother excitedly saying (too loudly apparently) that my father could ‘now get the senior discount’ while we were waiting in line to get movie tickets. It must have been back when he turned 55 and we were in Florida so he might have been carded for being too young looking. Regardless, he glared at my step mom and told he she didn’t need to yell that. We all cracked up.
Yeah as a teen I was a smartass and just said something as helpful as human.
These days because of the field I am in and the types of people i tend to associate with, instead of offensive questions like what are you, I get more appropriate and casual questions like are you from around here, or how long have you lived in Oregon sort of thing.
For someone looking for that “other” person in the family photos, well if they stick around they find out eventually, usually when they meet my lil sis, who is technically my half-sister but I only refer to her as such when explaining parentage.
I have a close friend who is Filipino… from Hawaii. She gets weird ass questions because she is Filiphino but born in the USA and her children are biracial, presumed Mexican around here which of course they are not.
Best thing ever, more diversity has made these questions not nearly as frequent as they were, even in non-diverse areas like here.
Its been a few years, but boy we got alot of questions about our twins when they were little. Kids seem to lower question inhibitions I guess. Still get this from time to time despite they are 20 and like 6’5"
Background: Twin boys, fraternal (not identical), one with blue eyes and dark hair, one with brown eyes and sandy hair, and about a 20% difference in size.
Q1: Are they twins? Yes
Q2: Are they identical? No they are fraternal (can’t you tell!)
My wife and I are white. We adopted two kids from Korea. I have a whole stack of funny questions.
Are your kids old enough to talk about the questions they get, if any?
Flip side to this, my wife’s aunt adopted 2 girls from China. Upon meeting them for the first time her aunt casually says “oh yea, we picked them up in China!” The delivery of that line still has me laughing from time to time almost a decade after the fact.
My kids are both adults now. To my knowledge they don’t get any questions relating to their adoption.
I was curious, and thank you for sharing.
I drive a paratransit bus.
One day, I picked up Randy, a great kid with a great attitude that I’ve been transporting for over a decade. He is severely disabled and has always been in a wheelchair, and does have a bit of trouble communicating, but he can talk, and in fact loves to talk. I tied down his wheelchair right behind me, and drove on to my next stop.
We pulled up in front of this woman’s house, she came out, and as she boarded the bus, she nodded her head toward Randy and asked me, “What’s wrong with him?”
I was so stunned, that all I could manage was, “What did you say?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “What’s the matter with him?”
I said, “Nothing that I know of. Why don’t you ask him? He’s right there.”
At which point Randy burst out laughing. The woman glared at him as she walked past and sat down. I guess she was offended at him laughing at the situation.
My buddy has 5 natural children and 5 adopted children. He said someone that saw them all out one time asked “which ones are your REAL children?”
Uh, they are all real children, dumbass.
P.S. He also drives a bus. Well, more like an airport shuttle. :)
My two favorite questions that we got with our adopted kids from Korea (keeping in mind that my wife and I are white and my wife is blond):
-
Are they adopted?
-
Are you going to tell them they’re adopted?
Because kids are dumb, right? They’ll never figure it out. Especially when random strangers keep asking that question, I’m sure.
