Yesterday, I leave work to catch the bus home and when it arrived, it was so packed me & the 50 other people waiting were forced to wait for the next one. It’s Seattle, its raining. I don’t mind the rain, but I do mind waiting, so I said “fuck that” and walked around to find a happy hour to kill time.
I walk into a fairly packed bar in downtown Seattle and squeeze into a seat between two men (pause). One of the men seemed hesitant to make way for me to sit down (I could easily presume that color played a role being that I was the only person of melanin in the establishment). So I sit down place my order. By this time I noticed that this guy was smashed based on his slurred speech when he ordered his next drink. I then greet him with a “How’s your day going” and he replies in a slurred tone “Greeeaattt”. Then we have some small talk and exchange a quick background information. Come to find out, his name is Ben, he’s from Georgia, he’s 50 something, and he’s a Delta pilot of the past 22 years and was previously a pilot in the Air Force and in Seattle until his plane left the next day. Coo.
We begin to get into more trivial topics like Ray Rice & Domestic Violence, Foreign Policy & Wars, Capitalism & Welfare, Systematic Racism & knowledge of self (all these topics are damn near the story of my life lol).
Most people that know me, know that I can have a conversation about damn near any topic in depth or if not that, ask thoughtful enough questions to understand it. Anyways, we had a solid hour & a half convo discussing all of these things, challenging each others understandings (well, not mine so much, most of what he said I’ve heard before).
Towards the middle of our conversation he kept insisting how powerful & intelligent I am which completely caught me off guard but was extremely humbling. As our conversation dwindled, he re-iterated his fascination with me and admitted that some of his perceptions were changed (once again, I presume it was because of my melanin, but probably because of my young age and ability to articulate & rationalize these complicated topics with him). He hugged me and said “thank you” and insisted he cover my tab and that he couldn’t wait to brag to his friends one day if he ever saw me on TV as the President of the USA.
p.s. I have no aspirations or plans to be the president, so lay your fears to rest lol