When I was 2ish or so, we lived in Oklahoma while my dad went to PT school at OU. According to the pictures from this time period I spent approximately 80% of my time in just my diaper. Patti Budge says it’s because of the “humidity” but even then I think I knew that pants were for suckers. That isn’t relevant to the story but in case you ever see pics of me as a kid I want that said.

As you might imagine from my current personality, I was quite outgoing as a child. I had a very chipmunk-y voice and insisted on saying hello to literally every person I met. And by met, I mean any human looking thing that was anywhere in sight.

It so happens that there was a black family in our apartment complex with whom we were friends. The dad’s name was Tony and his son was named Tony Jr. Take a second and realize the complications with that. Friendly young Danica, two black friends EACH named Tony, and blossoming deductive reasoning.

One day on our walk, I was saying hi to every single person like usual –

“haii!!” – baby Danica

“… Hi?” – random Oklahoman

“*sigh* Hi.” – Patti Budge.

200x in a row.

Then I saw a random, unknown black person. Cue blossoming deductive reasoning.

“haiiiii Tonyyyyyyy!” – baby Danica.

Yep. Turns out, I thought every black person was named Tony. I don’t know how my mom resolved that definitely awkward conversation, but it can’t have been easy.

This is The Beard’s favorite Danica story, maybe of all time. Now everywhere we go, whenever he sees black people he says “Hey look at all those Tony’s!”

Stay tuned for a follow-up post – The Young Beard was Even More of a Racist.