The Beautiful People

It’s too bad this blog will prevent any chance Elijah has of becoming an elected official. Because he makes friends. He’s good at it. When he started pre-school in Denver, it wasn’t a question of if, but how many friends he’d accumulate.

Now that we’re a few weeks in, I’ve been asking, “Who are your friends at school?” His crew is a girl named India, a boy named Jacob and a girl with a name that sounds like Giselle. And it’s a pretty tight knit group. Every night I ask who he played with at school, and every night the answer is India, Jacob and the girl whose name sounds like Giselle.

Last Wednesday, I asked again and again the same three kids came up. Diana, who seemed to have been waiting for that question all day said, “Why don’t you ask him why he only plays with India, Jacob and the girl whose name sounds like Giselle?”

“Because they are beautiful!” Elijah chirped.

Whoa whoa whoa. Aside from the fact he refers to people as “beautiful,” Eli limits his playmates to only the beautiful kids in class? He nodded his head in the affirmative. Doesn’t want to play with the non-beautiful kids? Again, an affirmative.

For a second, I thought, “That’s great. He’s one of the beautiful kids. According to the New York Times, the beautiful people make more money, they’re more successful and they have much better after prom parties.

But then I realized that I may not qualify to be his friend. So it was life lesson time.

“You know, Eli. Just because someone is beautiful doesn’t mean they’re cool. Non-beautiful people can be really cool. In fact, I would guess non-beautiful people are way cooler than beautiful people. Because they have to try harder.”

“But I just like beautiful people better.”

“Why?”

“Because they are beautiful.”

Ugh. I then began a fierce nagging campaign him to make friends with non-beautiful people. When he finally begged me to stop, I knew I had made my point.

And Friday when I asked him who he played with he said, “Dad! There was a boy named Zac who was playing in the sandbox and Zac was not beautiful and I said, ‘Zac, can I play with you?’ and he said, ‘Yes,’ and I played with him.”

I praised him on behalf of non-beautiful people everywhere