this will out me,
when my eldest(now in his twenties) was about five, we had been having chats about being careful what we say in front of other people, and if we notice someone who has something different about them,
we have a lot of friend and family with disabilities, and he had friends that have disabilities,so he was use to spotting differences, but because he is on the autism spectrum , he tended to give a running commentary on what ever he was thinking, we had to work on his awareness.
so we decided that when we were out and about if he spotted something that he wanted to talk about and it concerned a person, he would squeeze my hand, I would have a quick look, and we would chat about it later,
this worked really well, usually it was about clothing, how tall or short someone was, an endless source of fascination as his father and step dad are exceptionally tall,so he always wanted to compare, and his best friend is a dwarf, and has family members who are also dwarfs, so there was a lot of, that person wasen't as tall as daddy, that person wasn't as small as Joshie's daddy,
One day in a rush, just finished uni, picked him up from a friend's, realising there wasn't a bean in the house,I hand't had money for weeks, just made it to the supermarket which was half an hour off shutting, (we live in the sticks), I grabbed a trolly and started filling up with essentials, and in the aisle ahead there was a woman,
this women was clearly going through a difficult time, she was very very large, had little hair, was wearing a sort of nighty, she had tubes coming out of one arm, she was wheezing, and she clearly had some sort of colostomy bag, and pouching system, as well as the most extreme smell,which was over powering,she had a lot going on (my mum had just been through a similar situation, so it wasn't unfamiliar to him)
as we passed her, he squeezed my hand, I was really pleased, when we were far enough away down the next aisle, I bent down and he said, talk about it later, i said well done and he smiled, we turned into the next aisle and she was coming towards us, quite an overwhelming experience for him, so he squeezed my hand,
Each aisle we went down, she was coming towards us, even when i skipped a few, lots of hand squeezing.
we went to pay, there were only two tills open, I joined the queue, she arrived and joined the other, as I was packing my bags I glanced up, DS1 was watching the people in our queue behind us, looking at this woman who was putting her shopping on the conveyer belt ,her back was to our queue, the man behind us, realised a small boy(DS) was watching him, looking at this poor woman, and a look of total embarrassment went across his face and he quickly looked away,
Just as I was handing over my money, I heard a little clear voice say, "Don't worry, that's the big smelly lady, me and mummy are going to talk about later". DS was trying to reassure him it wasn't wrong to notice
There was no hole to jump into, I apologised and left. we had a long chat on the way home.