Shooting At Ants

I had somewhat of an intellectual skirmish with a colored man in the waiting room at the dentist's office this morning. I generally try to avoid so much as eye contact with negroes, but I felt today that a few words were in order. From the very moment I heard him speak my nerves were raked, coupled with the sight of him producing a state issued welfare card when asked for his insurance paperwork. Then he did it: he called a local reporter a "racist, white bitch" for reporting a string of black violence in the state's capitol.

Now that I look back, the whole exchange more or less amounted to him throwing rocks at a tank. The more I think of it as I write this, the more I get the feeling that I've punched a child. My conscience may drive me to turn myself in for animal cruelty. *sigh* Well, what's done is done, I suppose, so I'll get to it.

Of the half-dozen pebbles that managed to find their way to and bounce off of my hull, the one that got me thinking was the man's comment that White America would be a dismal place (mind you I've cleaned up the grammar and swept away the profanity, so I'm paraphrasing) without the accomplishments of black inventors *smirk*, scientists *cough* and scholars *giggle*. I so hastily stomped out any notion of a black man inventing the internal combustion engine, modern astronomy or adding color to fireworks, that I neglected to take the right approach. While shooting ants with a 12 gauge could be considered fun in some of the more rowdy circles I'm familiar with, What I should have done was pop the hatch and throw his stone right back at him (maybe I didn't because my people graduated to more efficient means of combat long ago).

The question I should have asked was "Where would blacks be without European influence?"

The answer I came up with was naked on the Serengeti holding a spear and a jar of peanut butter (assuming the jar and the means to make peanut butter are a gimme).

Another question comes to mind: Why didn't this fellow do what we all know his DNA was urging him to do and lash out physically? Why, when every fiber of his being was probably pushing him to find something, anything, pointed and stick it in my back, did he remain calm and relatively polite (keeping in mind the nation of people he hails from)? Have we finally gotten through? Have we finally closed the civilization gap?

Not likely.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it was one, or a combination of, the following reasons:
1. There was one of him, one of me. That doesn't come out to a fair fight in his culture.
2. He was in my part of town, and we don't take kindly to trouble, especially from his kind.
3. It was broad daylight.
4. He caught a glimpse of the Sam Colt Company's stainless masterpiece tucked neatly under my arm, behind my coat, as I reached for a worn copy of Time magazine.

You've gotta love a shall issue state.