Maybe My Arithmetic Is Off

Something has been bugging me for the last few weeks that I just have to express and see if I’m missing something. While over at someone’s home (not saying who to protect the innocent and avoid getting the idiot in question stoned), one of their young boys, 7 years old, was fascinated by the socks I was knitting. He came and sat with me and wanted to try. The other ladies in the room didn’t say anything and I thought it was sweet so I showed him as best as I could on a sample piece. He thought it very funny trying to get the needle to go where it was suppose to go but he kept at it. Someone even took a picture of us trying to knit together. Well, at about this time the boy’s father walked in the room and nearly had a fit. The little boy proudly looked up at his father and said something to the affect of “I’m knitting!” A very angry father barked that he was not happy his son was interested in sissy stuff. From what I later learned this apparently was fueled by an earlier incident in the week where the little boy was found playing with his baby sister’s dolls.

So let me see if I have this straight. Knitting + Male = Gay? What the hell!?! He’s only 7 years old! He’s fascinated by everything and toys are just toys to him. I let it go and told the little boy I’d make him something so he didn’t have to but still… GRRRR!

It just annoys me to know end when I run into people like this. When I worked at a bookstore during my college days, I remember all to well a little boy coming in to get a book with his father. His father was outraged that the book his son had come to get was “Amelia Bedelia”, a series of books his teacher had been reading to the class. Instead good old dad proclaimed when he saw the book, “Why don’t you get a boy’s book, something on football or baseball?” I was furious. Listen you idiot! If he honestly has a desire to read, let him read whatever he likes.

I run into this foolishness far too often yet it keeps surprising me. While at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, wanting to walk up and slap the father who told his young son that they weren’t eating at one of the ethnic food booths they were standing at because it only had weird food. Instead, he was taking him to go get a hamburger or hot dog from a normal food booth. *sigh*

And should you think this is only an issue I have with males, oh no! I’ve known plenty of women whose minds are also closed. When a woman tells you she hopes her baby is a girl because otherwise she can’t do things like pick berries at the local farm and such with a boy, “Boys love their fathers best anyway.” you just feel sad for her.

I want to start my own version of Scouts but mine will be co-ed and everyone will learn to knit scarves, climb trees, read books, cook food from a culture other than their own, and just enjoy life. So there!

Climbing off my soapbox now…