Just not paying attention

Ever since my kids were knee high to a grasshopper, they have been mistaken for being the opposite gender.  People claim that it’s because of the long hair (in my son’s case), but I’ve decided that most people just don’t pay that much attention.  I mean, really, if you see a child wearing a dress, most likely, that child is a girl.  Girls clothing and boys clothing are decidedly different.  Girls clothing has so much more detail, little ruffles, or trims, or gathers or little appliques.  If people actually took a second to look, it would be pretty clear.

So last week, I took my son to the farmstand to buy tomatoes.  The farmer/owner was there hanging out in his truck because he’s been robbed twice in the past two weeks.  Seems like a REALLY boring way to spend the day, cooped up in your truck with the A/C going . . . but I digress.  We drove down in the convertible, so I had DS’s hair in a ponytail.  We hopped out and were looking at produce and the guy comes over and starts making conversation.  Then he says to DS, “What’s your name, little girl?”  (In retrospect, it sounded sort of creepy, but at the moment, I didn’t get the heeby jeebies.)  Anyway, I corrected him and said, “Oh, he’s a boy.  I know, he has giant eyes.”  The guy responded something about, “He has a ponytail!” and looked at me like I was totally crazy.  I was thinking, “yeah, he has a ponytail, AND he’s wearing a muscle shirt, athletic short and Diego shoes . .. clearly, dressed like a boy!”

So then yesterday I went back to get more tomatoes and took DD with me this time.  Same guy was there guarding his produce.  We hopped out of the convertible and the guy comes over and I thought  I heard him say something about “little boy”, but I brushed it off sicne I thought I might have misheard.  Then he says, “At least I remembered he was a boy this time.”  “Oh, this is a different one, she’s a girl.”  He got the most shocked look on his face “now you have me all confused!”  LMBO!!  Seriously, if he would’ve just paid attention, he would’ve gotten it right.  She was wearing a very girly tank top, pants with little butterfly appliques and sandles.  She couldn’t possibly have been more girly.  Well, maybe if she would’ve been wearing a frilly, pink dress . . . but I don’t do pink!

I think it ultimately doesn’t matter how kids are dressed, people just won’t pay attention to that . . . . they’ll just look at the face.  I’ve come to the conclusion that giant eyes automatically means . . . .. GIRL . ..  not sure why, but that’s how it seems to work.  Ever since birth, DS has been mistaken for a girl (even when he has very little hair).  DD, on the other hand, was mistaken for a boy for a very long time, until she started holding her eyes open more and you could see the giantness . ..  now most people correctly identify her as a girl.

Really, this post has no real point, just rambling along incoherently! Ha!