My trip to 7-11
Rob and I are sitting around thinking how nice it would be to have some beer to wind down our Sunday evening so I head up to the 7-11 because the local corner store prices don't fit our budget and I figure a big chain like 7-11 will be cheaper. Was I ever wrong about that. $12.99 for a twelve pack of Shiner Bock? Jeez, it's not like the stuff is imported from France or anything; it's made right down the street (actually about 80 miles down the road, but in global terms that's just down the street.) So I'm shaking my head and thinking no way when suddenly the store is full of people that seem to be of the Pentecostal faith. I'm not dissin' the Pentecosts here, rather, it struck me as odd that I immediately jumped to a conclusion about their religious persuasion just by looking at them. Plus I noticed one of the young women's long hair had obviously had a trim and questioned my judgment which made me decide that I definitely had too much time on my hands to be wondering about such things in the first place. Maybe they are from some new religion that requires the women to wear long polyester skirts, but lets them trim their hair. I don't know, and quite frankly I don't give a hill of beans what religion someone practices unless it's one that tells them to kill me (I don't think too highly of people who belong to such groups, religious or otherwise.) So why was I even thinking about such things in the first place? Is it just human nature to categorize? Do we have some built-in instinct or need to put things and people in little boxes based on our first impressions? I've watched my parents get more and more judgmental as they get older and I fear I'm walking down the same path. Maybe it's the price of experience and you eventually get to the point where you decide that since 80% of the people you've ever met that looked or acted a certain way means that ALL people who look or act that way must fit into the same little box. I hope not. I definitely don't want to turn into the kind of person that makes those kind of snap judgments about people.