Adopted at McDonald's

My older brother Aaron went to McDonald's one day with my little sister Lynette on his shoulders; he was babysitting Lynette. Walking in he bumped into a school friend who looked a bit shocked.

The conversation went something like this.

"Dude, what's up with the little black girl? You babysitting or something?" (My little sister happens to be black)

My brother answered something like, "Yup, you've got that right. Babysitting my little sister!"

His school friend looked a bit shocked and replied, "What, is she adopted or something?"

This is where the story gets beautiful; you see we used to love to pull people's legs about our family. All of us have on occasion said crazy things to explain our interracial family. This time my brother's answer was truly classic. He said, "No dude, I am adopted!" The guy looked totally confused and actually said, "I didn't know they allowed that?"

My brother was a bit stumped and said, "allowed what?"

His friend didn't want to believe that blacks would be "allowed to adopt whites!" This incident happened in the eighties. What started as one of our silly jokes turned into a great lesson about the way people see the world and prejudice.

The beauty of being raised in a big interracial family is that at a very young age, I was thinking about prejudice, right and wrong and kindness. My point in this story is … Would you have a problem with this? If so why? Because it really shouldn't matter!

—Allison Ochs