Sunday morning the three of us are in bed. Havana is leafing through a book. Karen and I are splitting the weekend edition of the capitalist Financial Times.
I turn the page to an ad. It's for some high-end resort in the Carribean. The image shows a woman walking on the beach with a bellboy five steps behind carrying, we presume, her bags.
Havana peaks over and, without encouragement, explains the ad as she sees it.
"That's a worker and that's not a worker" she clarifies. Initially, I was a bit stunned. We hadn't begun our indoctrination on the issue of class and image. But I figure we're making big progress here, so I push the envelope a wee tad.
"Yes" I confirm to her and add, "worker - good" and then point, "bourgeois bad!" She looks at me with furrowed eyebrows. So I repeat, "worker -good, bourgeois - bad!" To which she retorts, "No, daddy, she's not bad. She's a woman."
Outwitted again.
Well, as one stickler for political clarification once said, "theory is grey, but the tree of life is green."
