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This incident happened almost a year ago. I had forgotten it, and wanted to post it now, it's an interesting story.

First, the players.

My dear friend M (Asian man, early 40s), his partner D (South Asian woman, late 30s) and their daughter who was 4 at the time, K.

Me, mixed race light skinned Asian woman early 40s, and R, my partner, big loveable white guy, late 40s. R is mostly bald and at the time had a salt and pepper moustache and goatee.

So R and I went to spend the day with M, D and K at their home in Peterborough on a sunny Saturday last fall.

D is a professor at Trent University. Why else would they move to Peterborough, home of POC whose numbers can be counted on both hands?

They live near this great farmer's market, so our plan was to go to the market, chill out, then grab some lunch.

The market was great, outdoors, huge, all over this parking lot. We got some cute tiny pumpkins to make pumpkin tarts (homemade!) and many other goodies.

We found a restaurant to go to, just outside P-town, and to get there we took a lovely drive along the Trent waterways. Lovely. I love the colours of fall, and getting out of Toronto to see them in their lustrous glory was wonderful.

D had broken her foot, and was in a wheelchair and we had called the restaurant to ensure the place was wheelchair accessible. They assured us it was. When we arrived we saw one big step up to their front patio and another two steps into the restaurant itself. We pondered the logistics. With some chair-sit-pivoting done by D, who was at least mobile with her uninjured foot, she was able to maneuver into her chair at the restaurant level. When we politely pointed out that their space was not, in fact, wheelchair accessible, the staff told us that a guy in a wheelchair "always comes here. We just pick him up in his chair and bring him in, he's fine with that."

Never mind that staff aren't trained to do this, this is one of the most unsafe and disrespectful ways for people in wheelchairs to gain access to spaces.

But I digress. 

We settled in for a lovely lunch, it was a rather fancy place. The food was delicious if I recall.

I love K. She is amazing. I had known first M and then D for many years. They had been together for more than 10 years before they had K and she is just so adorable. Soon we were drawing in her colouring book and doing all sorts of fun things.

If it hasn't been said already, P-town is very white. So the 5 of us were a bit of a freak show. These are my friends who I love, but being aware of all the white folks around us is a bit of a natural hyper-vigilance thing that POC do in these kinds of spaces.

But we were completely not prepared for what happened.

And older white dude (late 60s or early 70s is my guess) and a younger couple entered the restaurant. We were right at the front at a large table, so they had to walk by us, which the couple did. The older guy, clearly one of those "friendly" small town types, beheld us. Heading straight for R he said, pointing at K, "Is she your grand-daughter?"

My eyes, wide with shock, met R's, then M and D's. M and D smiled and laughed, "No she's our daughter" they said. The old guy looked around the table, smiled politely, and walked on to join his table. 

"What the fuck* was that?" I asked. "Um, did that just happen?" Somehow I needed to figure it out.

So here's my thoughts.

White folks are very friendly, to other white folks that they recognize as being from a similar class level. Sitting in that restaurant landed all of us in the "correct" class category. But dude was clearly looking to relate to someone at our table, and there was only one white guy there, visibly older than the rest of us, but certainly not in the dude's age group.

But just in doing the quick math, if Rick was a grandfather (which if I think about it IS mathematically possible), who was the mother?? There were no clearly 20-something-year-olds at the table (I look younger than my age but not that younger, FFS  )   And parenthood has given both M and D way more grey hairs than me.

So it was white-guy to white-guy, the way of small town white patriarchal hegemony. It was good for a laugh on the drive back to the house.

P.S. The wait-staff brought the cheque to Rick. It goes both ways. Ha! 

 * I always try to decrease my swearing in the presence of my friends' children. Try. So I whispered this one word.