Crazy Scary White Lady

So today on the ward I had a funny experience, not sure it should have been funny but after a while it started to make me laugh. I had a one year old patient who was so terribly afraid of the white people. Now you can see how it would be scary at one year old to suddenly be in a new environment where it is very cold and there are tons of people a different color from you running about talking in a language that sounds weird and coming at you with things sticking out of their ears and putting the other end on you and sticking pokey things under your armpit and clipping things to your toes all while your mom holds you down so they can.

So every time I walked over to this little guy he would start to whimper then when I would reach out to touch him he would cry and try and squirm away. Early into the afternoon I noticed that if I even got within 2 feet of the bed he would whimper then if I would back up a couple inches he would instantly stop. Lean in = whine. Lean out = quite. I thought it maybe just me so I had one of the other nurses try it.... same thing. It was like we had found a little on/off switch for the whimpering. It made everyone in the room have a little laugh including his mom.

One last funny fact about the whole thing... his last name is the local word here meaning "white person"