I had a run in with some soft racism last night. I was working on my day off and a couple was buying a bunch of records. The lady forgot her credit card and caught herself walking out with the records. I reassured her that even if she were to walk out without paying for albums, my extreme apathy and lethargy prevents from running down a customer. Then an old drunk guy decided to chime in "you look like you'd be a great sprinter." This is kinda hard to explain. Sure, he didn't straight up say "man, this purebred blackie has an extra leg muscle which allows him to outrun even my most racist hunting dogs." (Imagine all this in a New Zealand accent, which just sounds kinda racist, and yes, me saying all new zealanders sound racist is ACTUALLY racist), but the way he said it definitely made me feel like I was a specimen on an auction block and my potential attributes were being listed. And I'm not one to point the accusatory finger that everything is racist, this happened to be though. I wanted to teach him a lesson and start running for him, to show him that some tall black dudes run like a two legged turtle with a glandular problem. I wanted to dribble a basketball and have it bounce into my face so I could teach him a valuable lesson, but all this sounded like a lot of work, so I just sat back down and fortified the lazy stereotype as best I could. And then I literally ordered some chicken to be delivered, cause stereotypes make me think of chicken and then I'm hungry. Then the old guy asked if I knew which rockabilly band had an upright bass player and I realized he was an idiot, and knowing you can't cure stupid, I went about my night. On a side note, when I was 21 I worked at the PB Music Trader. During the ill advised PB Block Party, the store was packed and some dude grabbed a stack of Master P cds and bolted. I don't know what sense of duty and loyalty came over me but I sprinted out of the shop like a cheetah-kenyan-gazel and I ran the thief down in an alley. I grabbed the culprit and had this moment where I realized he was considerably larger and stronger than me and had me severely outnumbered in the neck tattoo department. And as I wondered if I had really put my life on the line for a minimum wage job and some 10 cent Master P cds the store was better off without, he dropped the discs and ran. But that was 4.5 presidential terms ago, unless there's cops chasing me or an orange chicken giveaway, I'm not running anywhere.