It couldn’t be avoided any longer.

After a few months of weaving and dodging, I was finally cornered and sent to attend a mandatory day long seminar on… diversity training.

8 hours of learning to appreciate and understand other cultures and ethnic groups. In other words, 8 hours of pure hell.

Honestly, I don’t need to attend a seminar in order to know that calling black people “niggers” might be considered a bad thing (unless you happen to be black yourself of course). However, I was curious to find out whether using hand signals might be acceptable as an alternative to using racial epithets.

“Are hand signals still allowed?”

“What?”

“Aww you know, instead of saying wops, greasers or wetbacks, how ’bout using hand signals instead? That way I can continue to be a flagrant racist without offending anybody, so long as they don’t know the meaning of the signals. It’s win-win!”

Blank stares.

Ok… probably not a good idea to be asking them these kinds of questions. This was gonna be a looooooong day.

Oddly enough, the seminar was being held in the very same building where I worked my first full time job over 7 years ago. I was going full circle in a way. Not that I gave a flying leap, as I continued to brainstorm ways to get out of this jam. There was no way, no how, not in a million years that I was going to spend 8 long hours in a small room being run by circus freaks…

“Hi Linc!”

I turned and saw Flora, one of my coworkers who was also attending the same seminar. Now out of uniform, she looked radiant in casual clothes and tanned skin that positively glowed in the bright sunlight. Her jet black hair danced in the wind as she greeted me.

“Oh…uh hey Flora! Wow, I barely recognized you there. You look h–, uh nice today.”

Maybe this won’t be such a bad day after all.

We went inside and took our seats. A black guy, a Muslim and a Jewish lady walked into a bar… uh the room I mean, and the first session of the day began.

We were instructed to stand up every time we were called on, and worse yet, after we would finish introducing ourselves or discussing our backgrounds, everyone else had to applaud.

My turn came and I stood up, not knowing where to direct my eyes, so I looked up at the ceiling.

“Yeah, umm, my name is Lincoln, and umm, yeah, I work for _____ and I’ve been doing it for 7 years.”

*Applause*

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’m back in kindergarten again,” I thought.

Flora though saved my life. At work she always tended to be a bit shy, so our conversations there had been minimal, but she was pretty talkative now. She had three kids, was married (dammit), but she was pleasant and happy to talk to me. We were constantly doing group sessions and had to pick partners all the time, so we just picked each other and the conversation flowed and ebbed from there, much to my huge surprise. I had been dreading the possibility that I would have to talk to complete strangers and discuss personal things about myself that I’d just as soon not share, but I managed to neatly skirt all of that because of Flora.

At one point she laughed and put her hand on my forearm, her soft fingers smoothing over my hair (I was a somewhat hairy guy, the natural result of having Italian genes). For a few minutes I couldn’t see straight. I was in a goo-goo eyed daze, while the blood cells in my forearm suddenly awakened and began shouting, “Good golly molly, a beautiful woman just touched us!! Rejoice men!!!! It is a new DAY!!!”

Word got out to all the other blood cells in record speed, and pretty soon my whole body began dancing inside. Gees, had it really been THAT long since a gorgeous woman laid a hand on me?

Time also seemed to speed up along with my blood cells, and before I knew it the seminar was over. The group quickly vanished as they raced outside to freedom, but Flora and I took our time, and as we walked towards the elevator, I asked her, “So, do you feel more more enlightened now as a result of today’s session?”

She rolled her eyes. “How about you?”

“Oh, consider me very enlightened here. I’ve especially learned to appreciate all the wonderful things that women in particular can bring into this world.”

Tags: bad day, black hair, casual clothes, circus freaks, culture, cultures, diversity training, ethnicity, flora, hand signals, job, leap, million years, muslim, racial epithets, racism, racist, woman, women
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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