Day 52: Mismatched Like Us

We have a set of plastic colored kids cups, each with three parts to them. There's the cup, the straw, and the lid. The set came with red, orange, yellow, blue and green cups, with matching straws and lids. We keep them in the front of a very accessible kitchen cabinet because we use them so often. Asia had grown out of cups like these, and so when Rex got here, we began using them again.

At first I only used the red cup with the red straw with the red lid, blue with the blue, and so forth. It didn't occur to me to switch the colors up, and so for the first month, my cup policy was segregation, without even meaning it to be. It just was. I don't know if I assumed only the same colors would fit together, and suddenly a mismatched set would mean milk pouring down Rex' chest. We wouldn't want that.

But then one day as I was putting a matching set together, I thought, "Why am I matching these cups together? What does it say to Rex if all our cups are the same color?" Then and there I decided to put different colors together, to integrate. You see, it doesn't take a genius to realize he doesn't look like us. He doesn't exactly match our appearance. But you know what? I found that the green lid works with the orange cup, which works with the yellow straw. Different in color but matching nonetheless. Like us.