Author's Notes: Hello everyone! This is a cute little story, based on a memory I have from when I was about four years old. This is almost written verbatim of my memory, with the exception of the characters. Please also know that I am not racist and am not intending to offend anyone. It's a four-year-old who doesn't know any better... Anyways, enjoy!

Questions

Gregory House had never seen anything like it before.

He was standing on an elevator with his mother, and when the doors had opened on the second floor, the man had walked in. As the elevator continued its ascent upwards, Greg stared. The man was tall, even taller than Greg's father, and he had to crane his four-year-old neck all the way back just to see the man's face. But it was no the man's considerable height that held him in rapture... it was his skin.

"Mom," he said, tugging on his mother's dress to get her attention. "Mom!"

"What is it?" she asked, looking down to him and grasping his hand to pry it away from the folds of her dress.

"Look," Greg said, pointing to the man. "Look at his skin!"

"Greg!" his mother admonished.

He stared up at his mother in confusion. "But Mom, look! It's such a weird color!"

"I'm so sorry," his mother said in a low voice to the dark man. Greg wondered if she thought that the dark man was angry, but he didn't know why she would think that—really, the dark man looked more amused than angry. His dark eyes seemed so dark and shiny, like his skin, that Greg wondered if he would see his reflection in them.

"It's so dark," he tried to explain... why wouldn't his mother understand? "See? Mom, look at it!" Greg urged, pointing at the man once with his tiny hands.

"Gregory Allen House, you are being rude and I will not stand for it," his mother said sternly.

Greg fell silent, but the curiosity burning inside of him made him continue to stare up at him. He wondered why the man's skin was the color of coffee beans, when his was like the color of the peaches that grew in their backyard. Maybe there was something wrong with this man... Greg had a cousin that couldn't see. Maybe it was something like that—the man had just been born with skin like that. Or maybe it was the result of some kind of illness that he'd been exposed to. Or it could have been...

Greg reached out to touch the man's hand. For a moment, he wondered if his fingers would turn the same dark color if he touched it, but the thought was secondary to his curiosity. He touched the hand, and was surprised to find that it felt the same as touching his father's hands.

The man looked down at him in surprise.

"Do you take baths in chocolate?"

The man stared at him for a minute, and then a wide grin spread over his face and a great, booming laughter filled the elevator. Greg stared up at him with his eyes wide in confusion. He was about to ask the man what was so funny, when the elevator doors opened and his mother whisked him away.