If its ok with you I'll sit under the table...

Eye contact for my daughter is hit or miss. She is usually OK making eye contact with the people in her circle...those people she sees everyday and are comfortable with. She never however makes eye contact with a stranger... well until this weekend. We were at a restaurant and had just been seated. Things are going swell...wonderfully easy. Its fairly quiet considering its the weekend and we didn't even have to wait. Things are almost what you might say going too well. My husband would say that he feels a disturbance in the force (STARS WARS NERD) me I call it mother's intuition.

The hostess is still at our table at this point handing out menus and utensils and all those handy things that help us behave like civilized people while eating in public.
Intuition has just struck...I look over to see what she is doing (my bet would have been the finger up the nose) nope...she is staring directly at the hostess. Not just your passing glance...a right at your face...yes I am staring at you look. I was shocked...she normally doesn't even acknowledge the hostess. She won't even order her own drink or food. (And yes we are working on this) I nudge her to distract her and luckily the hostess is finished and walks off but before he is completely out of sight...
"MOM! WAS THAT A BOY OR A GIRL?" no it wasn't a whisper but it wasn't a yell either it was however loud enough for Mom to want to crawl under the table and sit there for awhile. I don't. I don't because for one I simply will not fit and for the other this is what you might call one of those teachable moments.
At this point I would like to be able to say that we had this teachable moment...sadly no...distractible child that she is had moved on...forgotten and completely absorbed in her paper and colored pencils. Who was I to bring it back up?
Quite frankly in our gender neutral world where its perfectly OK for boys to wear make-up (my bet was on boy)and for girls to have short hair one can never be completely sure. You can't always answer the question boy or girl but that's OK. Its not our question to answer. The best thing that I can ever hope to do is to teach her that no matter what a person looks like they deserve the same respect that we expect. Curiosity is normal...rudeness is unacceptable. Next time (I am sure there will be a next time) I will be ready for that teachable moment.