#78 - SD

When I moved into the dorm in college, I met all kind of new people.  Coming from a private school in a small town, I was pretty sheltered.  #78 was a girl that I met who was not so sheltered.  She was majoring in speech therapy and was from New Orleans.  She had gone to an all girls school, but had definitely been around her share of boys.  I'll leave it at that.  Anyway, what I remember the most about her, is that our first semester of school, she started to get real close to one of the guys that was a dorm monitor.  I'm not sure exactly how they met, because he wasn't in charge of our dorm, but I remember seeing him there a lot.  Anyway, they started out as friends, and then she started to really really like this guy.  Sounds fine, right?  The problem came in because he was African-American.

Now I can say that even though I was brought up in the South, I am not prejudice.  I feel that a person has to be judged on their words and actions, not the color of their skin.  That being said, I can see the issues that arise from mixed marriages.  My friend struggled with all of this.  Telling her parents, telling his parents, projecting about the what the future would hold and if they had children, the possible problems that they would face.  At the time, and coming from such a small town, it was not as common as it is now.  I remember spending a lot of time talking with her about it.  The end of this story is not real dramatic.  I think that they went on a few dates, and that was about it.  I kinda lost touch with her after college and have no idea where she is now.  She is truly a person whose road crossed mine at a certain point in my life, and then continued on in another direction. 

I remember going to spend a weekend at her house in Kenner.  She lived right by the airport and I stayed up all night listening to the planes take off and wondering if the next one was going to land on her house.  I remember that she kept talking up a really fun place to go out in N.O.  Talk about shocked when she brought us to a gentleman's club for the night.  Talk about country come to city!

Anyway, she made the list because she was a good friend for about 2 years and then we parted ways.  Recalling her boyfriend makes you think though.  It also makes you ponder this quote

One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings. ~Franklin Thomas

Things are so different now than when my parents were growing up.  Hopefully when my kids are my age, people will be judged by who they are and not what they look like.