Another subway story

Someone was explicitly racist to me on the subway tonight. It started off innocently enough: "Is that thread? Are you happy?" I nodded (I did have thread; he wasn't that crazy). Pretty soon the guy involved was pointing at me going "HEY YOU! Why you kill people? Why you white people kill people?" Ignoring him didn't work. A firm "I'm not doing anything" got "No shit!" in an aggrieved tone of voice. Sharing an I-can't-win smile at that with the woman next to him just got her a talking to. By the time we got to my stop, he was just haranguing me not to kill people ("All I'm saying is people shouldn't kill people. That's what I believe. Okay? Just don't kill people, all right?") to which I responded "All right!" in a positive tone as I got off, because really, I tend to agree with that point. "All right!" he said back, and that was that.

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

~Kurt Vonnegut