A Fairy-Tale Family

Sweet LayNasha.  She's so pretty!

Kids say a lot of crazy stuff.  I heard a ton of stuff during my internship at East Lake Elementary that made me stop, scratch me head, and say to myself, Is that really how this kid looks at life?

One time Angelica asked me, "Do you get food stamps?"

"Uh, no." I said.

"You will when you have a baby." She said and nodded like it was the most natural thing in the world to be talking about.  In her world, it is.  The kids at this inner-city school assume that everyone lives off food stamps - except rich people.

One time Terrance asked me, "Did you read the busted papers last night?!"

"Uh, no." I said yet again.  "Do you read the busted papers?"

"Heck ya!" He said.  "I gotta check to see who in my family's in there!"

A lot of people don't know that I went through culture shock during my internship.  I never knew that I could experience culture shock twenty minutes away from my house, but I did.  I spent fifteen weeks in Chattanooga's inner-city surrounded by kids who looked different than me, talked different than me, had different names than what I was used to, acted different than me and even ate different stuff than I did.

I spent fifteen weeks having conversations like the ones above every single day.

You think that I would be used to it by now, but LayNasha said something tonight at Wyldlife on the way home that blew me away for the millionth time.

"When I grow up, I want a fairy-tale family." She told me.  "I want a dog, a cat, a little boy, a little girl, and a husband."

What would it be like growing up and thinking that a traditional family is a fairy-tale? I thought to myself.

I wanted to cry for her and her dream.  I wanted to cry because she had been cheated out of fairy-tale family because of people's sin and mistakes.  I wanted to cry because I knew she hadn't seen her real dad in over six weeks.

I don't do WOW Kids or WyldLife just to give a kid a good time.  I do it for real life conversations in the back of a fifteen passenger bus at 10:00 p.m. as we're driving kids home, listening to a little girl share with me her dream for a fairy-tale family.

Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education.  She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers.  She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in Emma Wheeler.  She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.