Broadening Melissa's Horizons ( I hope )

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Posted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on October 24, 1999 at 02:23:45:

In the last 6 months I've done henna history and suchlike classes
about 50 times..... most recently as lectures in Young Adult programs
in libraries hereabouts. I always learn something from the kids,
too....

Melissa, a skittery 10 year old was poking about all the pattern books
and pictures I'd brought, and I showed her my hand, and she said, "Oh
I've seen that before! Like, a boy in our class was gone a few days
and he came back from I don't know where, like, some other country or
something, and, like, that stuff was all over his hands. We asked
him what it was and he wouldn't tell us so we all called him "Disease
Boy"! "

By the end of class Melissa had henna all over herself, 5 friends and
she begged for extra henna cones to take home...... Thank God!

I've heard this sort of reaction at least a dozen times from grade
school age children.

Who else has heard the "Melissa reaction" or has been the subject of
such? Most of the Arab and South Asian kids around here had a real
loathing of their family celebration hennaes until recently....and
scrubbed hard or sat on their hands when they went back to school.
I'd really like to hear first hand accounts, just to more accurately
understand the social history of henna in the western countries....
email me if you prefer privacy.....

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