How’d you make your eyes blue?

I was going to do more posts about Tulsa, but today was the first day since I’ve been here (about a week) that Tulsa and I did not get along. I could list my grievances, and may at a later date, but for now I’m just going to write about something else. Some have heard this story already.

I spent the summer in Phoenix learning how to be a teacher and teaching summer school in the Roosevelt school district. I taught a class of kindergarteners, soon-to-be first-graders. My entire class was hispanic and they all had dark brown eyes.

I have blue.

During a small group session one of the girls turned to look at me. “You have eyes like my doll,” she told me. Amazed, she looked at my eyes some more and then got the attention of her classmates. “Look at her eyes. They’re blue!” After responding to various “Look at me”s and “I wanna see”s, one boy asked, “How’d you make your eyes blue?”

I told him I was born that way and my whole family has blue eyes. They continued to stare a bit, but we went back to our lesson.

A few days later I was working one-on-one with another student and he too noticed my eyes were blue. (He had missed it the first time round). He asked me the same question. “How’d you make your eyes blue?” I said I was born that way. “And they stayed blue?” he asked, amazed.

I was shocked by how surprised they were about my eyes, but it’s the kind of moment I expect to have a lot of during the next two years. There are so many little things that make up each individual’s life experience, it’s  just not possible to be aware of all your own assumptions,though I’m trying to get better at this.  I had assumed that everyone is exposed to eyes of various colors growing up, but such is not the case.

I guess I am one small bit wiser, but clearly in for many more surprises.