I sat in the campus union at my local university in the 1970s.  A fellow student stops near me and asks about the book I am reading.  The title is “Invisible Man.”  She mentioned she had read the book, and we spent the next few minutes discussing the plot and what each of us found interesting about the book.  The conversation lags and she walks away.

Over fifty years later I am reminded of this situation and begin to contemplate some things that I have not mentioned yet.  First, the book I was reading was Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and the book we discussed was H. G. Wels’ book “The Invisible Man”.  Ellison was a current black author who wrote a detailed account of growing up black in America.  The young lady that stopped to talk to me was also African American and at the time I found it humorous that she did not know the book I was studying for a contemporary literature class.

The point that strikes me as unusual today is that this girl was very attractive, and I let her walk away without even considering acquiring her phone number.  Was she flirting or just being friendly?  If she was flirting, why did I not pick up on that and flirt back?  Was it because I was raised that blacks and whites should not date or marry and it never occurred to me that she might be interested in me?  Or could it be that I was just too shy to have the guts to ask for her number? 

The question is, am I a bigot because I never thought to flirt with an attractive African American woman who was my contemporary, or was, I just raised to be polite unless the lady did more than just talk to me, I did not assume that she wanted or expected anything more?

I have thought about the possibility of whether I am prejudiced or not. I admit that I do have my prejudices. They are not based on race, culture, origin, or beliefs. I often judge people as being stupid. As Forest Gump’s mother said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Do we even know what that means? To me, stupidity is what we do. Ignorance is not having knowledge. Foolishness is lacking wisdom. Wisdom comes from God and age. Stupidity is a human characteristic. We all do things that can be referred to as stupid.

It may have been stupid for me to not take an opportunity to get to know that lady better. An invitation to the student union would have been appropriate. Continuing a conversation about science fiction could have been easy for me. I have read not only H. G. Wells but Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clark, and many other authors since that time. In another semester at that institution, I took a science fiction class. It was the first offered there and is standard now.

My problem was my inexperience with dating. I had only one girlfriend at that time. I dated her off and on for five years. Shortly after this encounter, she told me that we should not continue to date. I then began looking for girls to date. I never ran into that young lady again. I have wondered if another chance would have ended differently.

It was almost two years later before I met the woman who was to be my wife. I like to think that God brought her to me at the correct time. None of the others I dated were someone I could not live without. It has been said, “Marry the person you can’t live without, not just someone that you can live with. I did that.

©Copyright 2024 by Charles Kensinger