Robert and I made a pilgrimage to the temple of IKEA today to look for some things for my office at work and some other odds and ends. We try to go there during the week because it's an absolute madhouse on weekends. It was so friggin hot I thought we were gonna just melt in the parking lot.

It wasn't very crowded but I don't like big crowds anyway so even the medium crowd was enough for me. Most of the shoppers looked like back-to-school college types with mom-n-dad (cum checkbook) in tow. There were also a number of yuppie moms with one to four kids in tow.

We came upon one such mom with two little boys in the cart (probably about 5-7 years old) looking at shelves. As most probably know, IKEA  has a lot of items geared towards kids and shelves are no different. They come in all kinds of bright colors that kids love. Well this one poor little boy is looking at all the shelving choices for his room and he says, "Ooo, look! I want the purple ones for my room!" His mother then looks at him and snaps back at him, "NO! Remember? We've talked about this. Purple is a girl color, not a boy color and you are a boy!" He looked both embrassed and crushed. Robert looked at me and said, "If she keeps that up he'll be gay for sure." I so wanted to say something supportive to the little kid because I was that kid years ago - not with my mom, but I had teachers and adult neighbors telling me many things that little boys "do and don't do". I think this is where young gay kids start to feel the institutionalized shame for who and what they are and it takes years (if ever) of coming to grips with your own acceptance to counter act the early shaming. But what's worse is that I didn't see that purple was a "girl color" so I don't know where she got that. Sad....