There I was, resting on a bench at a quiet shaded corner in Disney's Epcot theme park. Occasionally one or two park patrons walked by; some stopped and talked to a staff stationed at the entrance of an attraction near me, and left. The attraction was closed apparently. My girlfriend was at another attraction next to this one waiting in line for her space station ride. Two hours of wait time, she'd told me, all excited. I told her I needed a break. Enough with the long wait.
"Say real." When I first heard it, I paid it no mind.
"Say real." Still, I was lost in my train of thoughts.
"Say real. You want Oreo? Say real."
Now it got my attention. I looked up ahead and saw a middle-aged father tending to his toddler. A common scene in Disney that doesn't deserve a full article of its own, but what caught my eyes was the age of the toddler and the racial disparity between these two. The boy, who was in a stroller, could be 6 or 7; kids this age usually refuse to sit in one. Judging by his looks and skin tone, I'd say he was Asian; the dad was Caucasian. Not a rare racial combination because of all the adoptions from Asian countries, but they were the first pair I saw around here.
The kid didn't seem to be able to say the R sound, so the dad kept pressing him with more "Say real," which sounds pretty much like "reo" in "Oreo". The kid leaned forward with his hands reaching towards his dad, but the dad refused to give the boy cookies.
"Say real," dad pushing the kid's hands aside.
"Say real," dad moving the cookie package away from him.
Then another boy came, older, Caucasian. He bent down to the younger boy and blocked my view of the kid. By the look of it, it seemed like he was hugging the kid. At this moment, I was pondering what I'd observed so far. Kids usually pick up a new language very quickly, so my first thought was the dad adopted this kid recently from a foreign country, so he didn't have enough time to learn the new language. But the age of the boy....
In the end, I still didn't know if the kid got his cookies.
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| Disney, Epcot theme park |
