My girlfriend and I went to a farm today with our friend Sukaina and her two sons, Zain and Kyrus. Sukaina, as you might guess, is of South Asian ancestry, but her husband is a pasty white guy not unlike myself, so their boys have a mixed complexion. Their father wasn’t with us, so while Sukaina carried the baby, I held the 2-year-old’s hand with my left hand. With my right, I held my girlfriend’s hand. We got several strange looks before we realized that people were assuming I was the child’s father, walking hand-in-hand with both him and another woman while their mother walked next to me carrying our baby!
The farm itself was pretty cool. Kyrus got to collect real hen’s eggs (though aggressive older New York children blatantly ignoring the four-per-child rule looted all the spoils pretty quickly) and walk around the hen house with hundreds of chickens clucking and fluttering around him. At first he was nervous and I was holding his hand, but eventually he got emboldened and wanted to walk around himself. All was fine until one of the hens pecked at his leg, and then he started wailing and we had to whisk him away.