For that, there’s an easier, though sometimes awkward fix: Learning.
Which is why I don’t hesitate to put my best ignorant foot forward despite the fact that I often end up telling myself: “Well, you’ve really put your foot in it now.”
Most recently, in my spare time, I’ve been sticking my foot into it in areas involving the great borderland we call race.
Take a couple of weeks ago, when I’m in a tire shop on a typical visit. I went in asking to have nail pulled out of a tire and a leak plugged, apparently thinking I hadn’t already spent enough money on replacing the roof, which is the reason the nail was in my tire in the first place.
Of course, because it’s me, I would be told after the standard half of eternity wait that not only is the tire not fixable but that that I need four new ones, because the tread is as thin as the follicles of your average new member of your average hair club for men.
The news, by the way, came with a toupee on top: That my “tire needs air” warning light will be on for the rest of its natural born days. No, not because, because the tires need air. That would make too much sense.
It’s because the sensors that indicate the tire has needs air have either died or should have been putting their affairs in order last month.
It was before this, while in the funeral home atmosphere of the waiting area, I told the middle-aged man and younger looking woman of Hispanic heritage they look like a father and daughter visiting the tire shop together.
It would really have been awkward had I found out they were newlyweds. But this time I was right, and we got off on the right foot.
After getting to know them a little better, I asked them about their favorite Mexican restaurant, because I always trust the ones in which Mexicans eat.
And after giving me their answer, then letting a polite amount of time pass, they politely informed me that, although both spoke Spanish well enough, they were not more Mexican than I am.
In fact, they were so nice about my being a Gringo, that I didn’t have to order the 70,000-mile limited warranty to cover the distance I wanted to get away at the moment.
Perhaps giving me extra points for rightly concluding the two were not married, the young woman told me she was studying medical technology at Sinclair Community College and likely would finish at Ohio State when the time comes.
With her interpretive help, her stepfather and I eventually concluded that he’d never been to the Mayan ruins that I’d visited at Copan on a visit to Honduras, but we both had been to New Carlisle, where they live. And that seemed enough.
It went pretty much the same a few days later when I asked a woman I’d never met before if she was Haitian.
In this case, I was again semi-ignorant, not totally. The Haitian community of Springfield has been much in the news, and at the time I met her, we were among a group of young Black men speaking in words I seemed to recall from junior high French, leading me to think they were Creole speakers.
On the other hand, this time I didn’t even get the continent of her homeland right.
She’s from Senegal, on the west side of Africa. And she is blessed with the patience to listen to a man drowning of embarrassment in a swimming pool and blathering on about the desperate plight of many refugees and how little sympathy they get from so many.
Well, she informed me she had had no personal experience with the refugee experience.
She remained patient when I performed a song and dance about wondering whether I could ever leave home for another country.
It’s not as hard, she said, matter-of-factly, when you come for — and find — a better life.
When I closed my mouth and opened my ears, I learned that her family has lived in Dayton. With three children of her own, she smiled as I talked about our two grandsons.
And both because I put foot in “it” and the water, don’t you know it, we’ll be glad to see one another if we share the water at the Splash Zone again.
Same with my tire friends, who I’ll be looking for in case we’re both at a place enjoying Mexican.
Bottom line: I don’t know more than anyone else about how to solve our nation’s divisions, much less the world’s. But I do know that if I my world is to be a more friendly and interesting place, I have to be willing to stick my foot in it every now and again.
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