Jolt

"Oh! I forgot to tell you what happened at the doctor's office yesterday."

"What?"

"Well, I walked into the elevator lobby with the kids, and there's a tall young black guy standing in front of the office directory. I didn't think I took much notice of him, but at some level I must have, because I can tell you he was wearing a leather jacket with a lot of graphics on it, a baseball cap, loose pants and a lot of jewelry."

"Yeah?"

"Okay, and then out of the corner of my other eye, I see this older couple, maybe in their seventies, just as country as can be. The husband is wearing a button up work shirt in a checked pattern, he has glasses and maybe a John Deere cap on. I don't remember anything about his wife except she was also elderly. I'm not actively observing any of these people, understand. I'm moving toward the elevator buttons with two kids, and they are barely in the periphery of my awareness.

"Then the old man crosses over to the young man in front of the directory, and says, very softly, very kindly, 'Who are you looking for, son?'

"And in a flash, in that instant, I see all of them: that the young man has been standing just a little too long in front of that lettered board, that the old man's approach is casual in a studied, kind way. And I see me: the unconscious assumptions I made the second they all crossed my line of sight, as plain as the white lettering on that black directory, suddenly legible. I had seen that young man, and assumed, "inner city, angry, criminal." I saw the old couple, and filed them under, "rural. ignorant. racist." In a moment, something unexpected happens, everything shifts, and I see all of it.

" You have got to blog about that."

"Okay, I will."