Writing challenge: "Write a short story based on a Chinese food menu."

It was all ready. Everything was in place.

He'd been at it all morning, getting all the items entered in, finding pictures and icons for them all, and arranging the categories. The menu board was finally complete.

He'd hesitated on getting it. It was an expense, and it needed to be mounted on the wall behind the counter, and he'd grown up with printed paper menus which should have been fine. But all the other restaurants of his class had them. He couldn't even claim his place was too fancy for a tacky digital menu...not when it was called Jimmy So's So Good Food.

And it was admittedly better to be able to just adjust the menu as needed, rather than try to waffle on a printed menu with things like "in season" or "when available." He could even have different menus for different times of day and switch them on a timer. Or whenever he wanted.

He rubbed his eyes and took one more look at his laptop screen. All the dim sum stuff was in its proper section, and the entrees were in theirs. Prices were showing up. Vs and Gs and peppers and all were in place to highlight customer preferences, needs or squeams.

He clicked on "Refresh" and got up from the kitchen table. He walked out to the front, past the counter to where customers, hopefully in quantity, would be gazing up in wonder at his restaurant's offerings.

And, sure enough, the display board looked just like the laptop screen. Nice and bright and clear and sorted and appetizing.

And then it changed. The turnip cakes moved from the dim sum section to the entree section.

He blinked at it a couple times, then dashed back to the kitchen...where he found his seven-year-old daughter Angela at the laptop, peering at the screen intently and working the mouse.

He did not yell at his daughter. He would not yell at a child. The restaurant was closed, so there was no harm done. Whatever she was doing could be fixed. He would not get mad.

He still had to take a deep breath and let it out before moving to join her. "Hey, Angel...whatcha doing?"

"Fixing this. Making it better."

It had taken him an hour to learn the program and get all the items entered in, then laid out the way he wanted. He sat down slowly beside his daughter and kept his voice steady. "Why is it better that way? The turnip cakes should be in the dim sum section."

"The pork buns don't like the turnip cakes and told them to go away."

"...Why would they do that?"

Angela shrugged. "It's how it is in school."

His irritation melted away and threatened to take his stomach with it. It was the first he was hearing of any problems with school. Was it simple clique-ism? In first grade?

It couldn't have been racial, could it? They were in St. Paul, Minnesota. Nearly a quarter of the city was asian. There were plenty of places in the country where he could see racism showing up in elementary schools, but he thought he was far away from them. He only had a trace of a childhood accent, and as far as he could tell his daughter had none at all.

Maybe it had nothing to do with race. Maybe it was just boys versus girls, or cool kids versus nerds, or skinny kids versus fat kids.

Then he caught himself. As aware of racial issues as he was, as much of a relief it would be for whatever the issue was to not be racial, there was no "just" or "only." Long before he ever thought he'd need to tell his daughter about the birds and the bees, it seemed he would need to talk with her about prejudice and exclusion.

And he had no idea what to say.

He gently put his hand over his daughter's on the mouse. "Honey...it's all food. None of it's any better than others."

"Then why are they in different places?"

"Because that's where people will look for them. People like different things, but they want to know where to find them." Their hands moved together to drag the turnip cakes back to the dim sum section. "All of it gets ordered and eaten. It's all the same."

It felt like a cop-out. It wasn't deeply philosophical or metaphorical or anything. But he told himself he wasn't a guidance counselor. He was a parent, and he was the owner of a cheap Chinese carryout restaurant with a gaudy digital menu over the counter.

He refreshed the menu board and took his daughter back to her bed.