There's an after-school educational program in Oakland that helps prepare girls from urban areas catch up in school. My friend Kathleen is a teacher there; she has a classroom full of boisterous 6-year-olds that have been known to scream things at one another like "Eat my pussy!" I adore her stories about her girls--the idea of Kathleen teaching is amusing enough, she's probably only a few inches taller than these tykes. When she gets flustered, which is often, she flaps her tiny hands in the air as if she's trying to clear a bad smell. The girls seemed just as entertained by her as I am, they've even composed song and dance routines to pay tribute to her.

One of their favorite ways to demonstrate their dominance is for one of them to get in the other's face and assert, "Little girl, you be doing too much."

The other inevitably replies, "No little girl, you be doing too much."

The idea of 6-year-olds referring to each other as 'little girl' tickles me to no end.

In deference to her recent passing, Kathleen decided to teach her class about Rosa Parks. She hung up a picture of Ms. Parks and asked the class if they could identify her.

That's the woman who invented the perm!" one shouted.

"No stupid, that's the wife of the dude that had a dream," another one volunteered.

Finally, one particularly perceptive tot piped up, "That's the lady that was on the bus and then the white cops took her off with guns because the white people wanted to sit there."

Kathleen attempted to clarify the story when another student loudly volunteered, "White people be doing too much!"

Kathleen stood there for a moment, and then agreed. "Yes," she nodded, "sometimes white people do, in fact, do too much."