Martin Luther King Jr. Had More Than 200 Jellybeans & Other Historical Facts

Yes, this is done entirely in jelly beans. From odditycentral.com

“Hey mom, did you know that Martin Luther King had more than 200 jelly beans?”

I try in vain to scan my brain for words that sound like “jelly” or “bean” and might have something to do with MLK.  The 13 year old’s laughter is terribly distracting.

He persists.  “Don’t you remember that story?”  

Note:  Yes, the kid is in an intense remember that? period.  My favorite is when he reminisces in his five year old way about not having done something in “years”.  He finally has a few to choose from.

It was time for me to ‘fess up.

“No, honey, I don’t remember.  Did you hear a story like that?”

“You don’t remember that?  He was a great man and bad people killed him and when he died African American people didn’t have a father anymore!”

You know, I kind of  just wanted to go work out and grab a frozen yogurt.  To correct a five year old is to open a very large, very time consuming can of many worms.  I will not bother to fight, for example, the way he calls Cheetos “Macheetos”, or the way he rejects the word ”yesterday” in favor of the more precise “yestermorning” and “yesternight”.  But, on the very day after a federal holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I was sitting with a kid who was under the impression that his contribution amounted to prolific fatherhood and seriously awesome candy distribution policies.  At the very least, a good talk was in order.

I can’t blame the kid for rolling with keywords, both because he’s five and because I still do the same thing.  Honestly?  If someone were to tell me about the ice cream buffet at the Male Underwear Models’ Beach Volleyball Tournament where one of my toes will get broken off every time the ball is spiked, I’m not going to hear the toes part.  Still, it’s for this reason that every year I hold my breath when MLK Day comes around because the message–the oh so important message–seems to get muddled in the frenzy to jam a series of age appropriate civil rights studies into a week.  The coloring pages alone have a tendency to stop my heart.  Obviously I don’t know how he’d feel about becoming a coloring page at all, but I do know Liam did last year’s portrait in so many snappy primaries that Dr. King looked like he was fresh off the stage after a performance in Bob Fosse’s Magical Super Drag Clown Revue.  I do have a hunch the good doctor would appreciate the conversations that start with the coloring pages, even if that conversation opens with, “And what made you decide to go with purple for the hair?”

Racism, equality, and civil rights are heady issues for all of us, and at five it may seem like a spoonful of jelly beans will help it all go down.  Sometimes it does, but I do know my kid also responds well to keywords.  Might I suggest “kindness”, “fairness”, ”love”, and  ”peace”?  How about on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and every day?

Tags: children, family, memories, mlk, momblog, moms, parenting, school