Photo: Courtesy of Kerry Clare
My children have enormous heads. Once, when my eldest daughter was a baby, I brought her into a walk-in clinic and the doctor pulled out a tape measure and wanted to schedule an MRI. I would have been concerned, but our cranial family tree indicates a precedent for heads that are, as someone once said, ?like Sputnik.? So we buy our kids hats in adult sizes?it?s no big deal. We wouldn?t think anything of it, if not for random weirdos making comments on the street.
By now, I can see it coming. She is usually a woman, shuffling down the sidewalk, and she stops to look at my beautiful girls. ?Your daughters are very smart,? she says. The first few times I was flattered because my girls are smart?maybe she had overheard their precocious conversations, extensive vocabularies and excellent sense of humour. But then? ?Big brains,? the woman continues. ?Such big brains in such big heads.? She is smiling, and I?m smiling back at her because this is what nice people do. It?s the very definition of civility, but it?s also profoundly wrong. I?m smiling while this woman insults two people whose dignity?and heads?I?m responsible for. And falling into the trap of politeness is a terrible example to set for my daughters.
Not that I am particularly polite. Or nice, obviously (reread the first line of this piece). But while ?goodness? is an ongoing project, I feel it?s super important that my children know how goodness is distinct from niceness. This isn?t a vir...