stereotyping

so. saturday morning... i went to am/pm to indulge in a VERY small fountain drink, dr. pepper with crushed ice (an amazing treat). i was standing in line. i was second in line and there was a gentleman behind me with a trail of people behind him. the registers at the am/pm were acting up. not the fault of any person in the whole building, just a technology glitch. the manager is apparently working on it as quickly as he can and the other employee is trying to appease the people in line with her apologies and smiles. i was not even irritated, believe it or not. then the gentleman behind me started yelling at the manager, telling him things like "your equipment is faulty" "you should invest in better stuff" "get the &#*%! fixed" just being pretty rude. and pacing back and forth and sighing and grunting. made his point very clear that he was irritated. the manager was not rude and actually was handling himself well, considering he was attemting to fix this situation. so, he stopped ranting and raving for a moment and at a time of peace he leaned forward to me and said "you must be in your 20's". i didn't know quite how to respond to such a random comment. i replied "no, in my 30's". and he said to me "well, the only people i know stupid enough to drink soda in the morning are kids in their 20's". well, i immediately start thinking of a million mean and horrible things to say to this man, that i was already irritated with, when i was saved by the gentleman behind him. he said "you must be a gardener". and the rude man said "no. im a business man, why did you think i was a gardener?" and the other gentleman said "well, your mexican, so you must be a gardener". the rude man didn't even know what to say, he attempted backpedaling for a minute and then realized the mans point and backed off. he never apologized or anything, but he sure didn't have anything else to say.



so there are two thoughts i would like to share. first I AM NOT IN MY 20's ANYMORE!!!! holy smokes. my 20's are over. and i guess i have been so blah about turning 3o that i didn't even stop to reflect on that decade of my life. so. i took some time to do that on saturday. wow. what a 10 year block in my life. the worst and the best things are included there. i cannot even go into thoughts about my 20s because it would be a 5 mile long blog... at some point, possibly, just not now... but what an amazing decade of life. i hope my 30s are little more calm... hahahaha...



then my other thought is about stereotyping. that man assumed i was in my 20s based solely off the fact that i was drinking soda in the morning. how ignorant. how stupid. how closed minded. the gentleman was right about then coming back with taking a generalization about a race of people and making the same type of assumption on him. just because of a characteristic does not classify me into a group of people. im individual and unique regardless of my age, my habits, my race, my sex. i am sandra. and he is him. he has his own story, just as the rest of us do. anyhow. i am going to work harder on not classifying people and placing them into categories based of characteristics... anyhow... another lesson learned. again. :)