6 DOUBLE TAP TO ZOOM WITH PHONE OR TABLET INTRODUCTION have likely missed that there was a cultural expectation at all in this interaction. Outsiders know that they don’t know anything, but they know to ask, or to simply wonder within themselves about the behaviors they see. Outsiders are familiar with the feelings of being out of place. Out- siders look to insiders for help, relying on observation for clues about appropriate behavior. Outsiders walk lightly and refrain from making judgments about what they experience, knowing that without context, their conclusions are likely inaccurate. Outsiders give insiders the ben- efit of the doubt, attributing the best possible motivation to behav- ior that may seem off-putting or rude. To an outsider, the unfamiliar leads to what Venashri Pillay calls surprise: “Surprise happens when our expectations are not met. Rather than dismissing or explaining surprises away, it is good to follow them, seeing them as tributaries of the river. It is likely that divergent values or meanings are animating the behavior that surprises us. With a spirit of inquiry, we seek to learn more rather than using our frames of reference to judge the differences that led to our surprise” (Pillay 2006, 289). As I have become a more frequent traveler, I encounter this type of surprise more and more often. It was there—on the subway platform in Japan—that I realized I had made the shift. I was no longer strictly a tourist; I had become a self-aware outsider. I stood for a moment, having a sort of out-of-body experience, and absorbing the gravity of my enlightenment. And that’s when it happened. The idea for this book engulfed me like a wave. I clearly saw a parallel between my place as an out- sider in the metro stop and my role as an outsider with children. The lens through which I see the world is not just American or female or middle-class or Californian; the lens is also adult. The lenses that my children have are entirely different because they are members of a separate culture. My children and I share a common culture of race, ethnicity, ability, geography, and socioeconomic class, but we are situ- ated in entirely different cultures demarcated by age. The same dispo- sitions I need to engage respectfully with the Japanese culture, I need to engage respectfully with young children. My failed attempts at COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL