Avery K. Tingle, The Gamer Author

About a year ago, I was at the self-checkout at the local WinCo when one of their employees approached me out of the blue.

He looks me dead in the face and says;
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“I’m sorry, not sure what you’re talking about?”
“Oh. I’m sorry. All of you look alike to me.”

He turned around and walked away.

That was that.
WinCo isn’t a place you can avoid if you live here. Moses Lake is a town of almost twenty-five thousand people. Just large enough to be a town, small enough to run into each other every so often. This is where we get our groceries.
He and I had various run-ins over the months. We let our feelings for each other be known. When I would use the self-check, he would greet everyone who passed him by except for me. I would turn away when walking past him. And, of course, almost everyone else who knew him loved him (this is racism’s true insidiousness).

I was as passive-aggressive as I could be. I even did a TikTok about one of my recent experiences with him.

A few weeks back, I was left with no choice but to deal with him. I’d cashed in a bunch of coins and every other cashier was dealing with a crowd. I asked him for help.

He was just as surprised as I was. He stammered a bit but was customer-service friendly, even directing me where I needed to be for further assistance.

Then, as I was leaving the store, we exchanged curt nods. Eye contact lingered for a bit longer. No words were exchanged. No apologies, no fist bumps. Just a mutual acknowledgement of the other’s existence.

We live in distrustful, divisive times. It’s easy to lock in an assumption based on how someone looks, or how they act, or worse, how the media portrays.

But maybe, just maybe, when you actually look past the superficial, you find whole reasons to dislike someone that have nothing to do with the color of their skin.

Or, maybe, we’re not so bad.

Thanks for reading.

Avery K. Tingle is a scifi/fantasy author currently residing in the Pacific Northwest. Owned by two cats, he is passionate about social justice, Star Wars, and mental health. Connect to his award-winning writing and social media here.