I’m not sure if he thought I was racist.
This morning (afternoon), I woke up after finally having a very good sleep. Hair still muffled, I throw on some workout clothes—green shorts, a black shirt, with a grey pullover. I slip on my Vivobarefoot shoes and start to walk to the supermarket just around the corner. I leave my contact lenses at home because I want to see how well I can do in life with blurry vision.
As I cross the street, I notice a black man in a blue jacket walking about 300 feet from me. Actually, I don’t know how far he was, as it’s hard to tell when you can’t see. I heard his feet shuffling and thought that he was jogging or running, so I turned around to check, and he seemed to be far away. Maybe 30 seconds later, I still got the impression that he was jogging and would be approaching me soon and since I felt worried that I’d block his path—as a fellow runner, I really hate to deviate if I don’t have to—I turned around again to see him still a ways down the path. Maybe 30 seconds later, I turn around and he was right there. It oddly felt like the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where you see the knights running in the distance, and then in the next clip they’re the same distance, then all of a sudden they’re right there.
He passes me, and gives me a look that says, “F*ck you white boy for being afraid of me.”
At this point, I notice that he was wearing flip-flops and that’s why he sounded like his was galloping towards me.
I say, “I heard your feet,” or something equally incomprehensible.
After he passed, I started to think how we both may have misunderstood each other. I could barely see anything, was half asleep, was hungry, and was curious and confused as to how he wasn’t approaching more quickly. I felt some fear about him being black, yes, but I also felt fear for many of those other reasons as well, especially the fear of a jogger running me over because I wouldn’t get out of the way.
At the same time, I interpreted the look he gave me as him declaring I was a racist. Maybe he was just annoyed that I was looking back. Maybe he was confused by my shoes. Maybe he was hungry as well. Maybe he found my disheveled hair to be disrespectful. Maybe he was annoyed by this white boy, but I doubt that was the whole situation. It never is. Maybe he didn’t know what to say either.
As I continued to walk, I thought about how I would write about this. I started to drift into how I would place the words and string together the story, and as I did this, I arrived at the red light at the crosswalk, standing next to the same man.
I noticed he was wearing headphones. I wanted to say something to clarify, to apologize. I didn’t have the courage. He walked on.
I hope he has a good day.