Xtra Point: Meet my new 4-year-old friend Karen

By Jeff Dawsey
| 7:00 a.m. November 23, 2016

Karen Bullock and I, hanging out at Flagler Baseball's last games. Photos by Abby Miller

I taught my little friend how to break open sunflower shells.

Karen wanted a picture with her barbie doll Valerie.

Ormond Beach Observer
Sports

I love kids. They're real. They often tell us what we don't want to hear, and they expose a lot of our prejudices and discriminations.

As I was finishing up a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit under a pavilion during Flagler Baseball's closing day games on Saturday morning, Karen Bullock — a 4-year-old — sat directly across from me and sparked a conversation.

After introducing herself, she then introduced me to Valerie her barbie doll. She had just come up with that name, because she forgot her first one. Valerie is actually her other doll's name as well.

Karen went on to tell me about her family. She has two sisters; one is allergic to chocolate, and the other lets her play with all of her toys.

We also had a conversation about my life. She asked if I were married (though I wasn't wearing a ring), and I showed her a picture of my beautiful wife, Jessica. Karen expressed how pretty Jessica looked and she liked her name.

Assuming I had other things to do, Karen's dad, Harry, tossed her his phone and suggested she watch Disney on Netflix. She had other plans.

"Can I take your picture," she asked me. Seldom do I, the "photographer," get asked to have my picture taken — and never by a kid — so of course I said yes. I then asked her to take a picture with me, and she didn't hesitate.

Having already made my morning, Karen offered me some of her Little Debbie donuts and then a sunflower seed. I didn't want the calorie-filled donut, and I didn't want to refuse everything she offered, so I took the seed.

I realized that she ate the entire seed, so I taught her how to crack the outer shell to get the inside. Karen told me it tasted a lot better.

When one of her dad's friends stopped by to see her and asked what she was doing, she simple replied, "Just hanging out with Mr. Jeff." She made both Abby Miller, a baseball parent, and me chuckle.

In this country, we've been encouraged to use our differences to separate from one another. Karen is white; I'm black. She's young; I'm old. Karen has a lot of hair; I'm bald.

None of that or our other differences mattered to this little girl, and they didn't seem to matter all to her father Harry either. I was well pleased with him allowing his daughter to befriend a stranger.