In the desert during the war, Imet a white guy who hadn’t met too many black people. Over the course of timewe were out there together, we had many opportunities to converse. I’ll neverforget our first real conversation though.
“So, like, what do you do backhome?” he asked me with sincere curiosity.
“I go to school, man,” I repliedproudly.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked. “Well,what’s your major?”
I went on to tell him that mymajor was secondary education.
“Cool,” he said.
“So you want to be like a gymteacher, right?” he automatically assumed.
For a moment, I thought he wasjoking. However, as the conversation progressed, I came to realize that hereally thought that, because I was a black man with a slightly athletic buildwho attended college and majored in education, my goal was to become a physicaleducation teacher.
“No,” I replied rather annoyedby the assumption. “I’m studying English.”
“Whoa, that’s really cool dude,”he responded. “So you like basketball and football though, right?”
Calmly, I touched my ears withmy fingertips and said to myself “WOOSAH.” Then I explained to him that Ididn’t care for sports at all and that personally, I thought it was merely anactivity for Neanderthals and the idea of chasing balls up and down a field ora court never excited me. Then I told him not to take it personally if he likedto indulge in that sort of thing because I wasn’t trying to offend him, butinside I was growing perturbed by his line of questioning.
“Dude, are you serious?” he askedas he gazed at me with an amazed daze as if I were a Martian or a dinosaur.
“Quite,” was my retort.
“So, like, what do you do forfun?” he asked.
“Well, I like to read and writepoetry and stuff,” I replied. “But more than that, I like to sit and meditateand think about life.”
“I like to write too,” he said.Finally we had found some common ground, I thought. He showed me a few thingshe had written in his spare time and I found it to be rather interesting. Ialso showed him a few things I had written from long ago. It wasn’t anything Iwas really proud of — just some scribbling I wrote during my younger days. Hisjaw dropped.
“You wrote this?” he askedexcitedly as if he had just discovered a hidden jewel.
“Yeah bruh, so?” I replied.
“Dude, no freakin’ way!” heexclaimed.
“Yeah dude,” I retaliated.”Way.”
“Where did you learn all ofthese big words?” he asked. (Note to readers: There are no big words, onlysmall minds.)
“There’s this neat little bookthat I like to flip through from time to time called the dictionary,” Iresponded rather sarcastically.
“Dude, you must hang out withguys from like Harvard or Yale or Princeton or somethin’ like that, huh?” heasked.
“No,” I replied. “Me and thoseguys don’t really cross paths too often.”
“Wow!” he said as he looked onat me in utter astonishment.
Question: Would you have feltinsulted in this situation?
