It has been YEARS since I first renamed Dora the Explorer "Dora the Latina Whore." It's a really fitting name for her, especially given her penchant for plastering her face all over every imaginable thing. Her football-shaped noggin was on clothes and diapers, toys and underwear, plates and, well ... everything when Alexis was a toddler.
Dora's face was everywhere because there wasn't much Dora wouldn't do for a buck or two.
And Alexis loved her. Every annoying little thing about her, Alexis found irresistible. She used to stand in front of the TV yelling right along with that stupid Latina Whore. "MAP!" When we went to stores, Alexis begged for every imaginable piece of Dora merchandise.
It made me insane.
I never could stand the Latina Whore, and there wasn't anything that could make her tolerable.
By the time Alexis was three, there was a decent collection of Latina Whore merchandise in our house. It accumulated like some sort of communicable disease because 1. Alexis was really very determined that the only things she wanted were the Dora things. 2. Alexis was really very determined that the only things she wanted were the Dora things.
So. That.
I used to try to bribe the kid into picking ANYTHING that wasn't Dora. "I'll buy you two toys if you get two toys that don't have Dora on them," I would tell her.
It didn't work.
Cash also didn't work.
Alexis didn't care. She wanted Dora and that was all there was to it.
The thing about her determination was that it made me all the more vocal with my thoughts. Even when Alexis was two years old, she knew I didn't like Dora. Alexis knew she was allowed to like Dora, but that I didn't. At all. Not even a little bit.
In every way, it was the beginning of Alexis learning that it was OK for us to not agree. She likes what she likes and I like what I like. I love her even if she does have really bad taste in television shows, toys, music, sparkle levels and pretty much everything under the sun.
Alexis and I are very different people, and she knows that's OK. I think maybe I have Dora to thank for that.
