I was devestated. I started to push the car back into the parking space but the Honda Pilot is heavy and I was having a great deal of difficulty. A co-worker came to my rescue and I was at least somewhat happy that it was a male co-worker that wouldn’t later make fun of me for the rest of my career at TI when he passed me in the hallway.

“Eddie you need some help?” Chris asked with genuine concern.

“Yeah, I think I ran out of gas.” I said miserably with a chuckle of embarrassment. “This has never happened to me before.”

The truth is I’ve ran out of gas a number of times in my life, but not once in the last 10 years.  When I was younger I had a truck that had a broken gas gauge and it left me stranded numerous times. My main reason for not filling up is because I AM LAZY. Gas is a pain in the butt to stop and buy. It costs money and eats up precious minutes that I could be using to something productive, like eating malt vinegar chips and swilling soda while watching HGTV.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” Chris asked.

“Well, I live really close by and so if you could run me home that would be great.”

I had friends coming over for a dinner and game night and I had much to do before their arrival.

I got home and pondered how I was going to make my last minute grocery store purchases without a car? I decided to just ride my bike to the grocery store and then when one of my guests asked, “Where’s your car?” I said, “Oh, I left it at work so I would be forced to ride my bike around town this weekend.” The lie came easily because I HAD REHEARSED IT. Can you believe it. How dumb and I?

Saturday morning I woke up and wondered how funny I would look if I was carrying a gas can to my office. Just two miles from my house it wouldn’t be a long walk. My brain processed all the possible options: Call Roger and Jes, Ask my next door neighbor, ride my bike with the gas can, wait until dark and then make the trek to my office building. I finally decided to disquise the gas can with plastic trash bags and ride my bike to the office. It worked flawlessly. The bags made it look like I had made  a grocery run. It was still so early in the morning that there were few cars on the street and although the gas can contained about 3 gallons of gas in it, I was able to balance it rather easily on the left side of the bike handle.

Lastly, I needed a funnel for the gas. What to do, what to do. I emptied out a bottle of Mrs. Meyers lavender fabric softener, cut the end off it and washed it thoroughly, bam!- homemade funnel created.

I got my Honda running with little effort after I filled the tank with abotu 2 gallons of gas. I immediately drove to the nearest gas station and filled up the tank and was delighted to find that gas was only $2.99 a gallon! Sweet.

So I got my car running without having to call on anyone (other than my co-worker Chris) for help, something I’ve resigned myself not to do. I don’t like being needy and sometimes it’s good to just figure things out on your own.

I was only 6 years old when I saw the people in downtown Dallas rallying around city hall. My mother was there for an abortion protest, but my Dad had gone to drop her off and there were all these people shouting out, “Freedom, Yes, Apartheid, No.” The word meant nothing to me, sounded like nothing I’d ever heard and I couldn’t break it up into syllables and further discern it’s meaning - but now I am fully educated in Apartheid and I understand the struggles that black Africans went through in order to be treated as equals in their own land.

Apartheid only ended in 1994 after years of racism and segragation. In Africa, blacks had a curfew and had to carry around pass books in order to move about freely during the day. At any time a police officer could stop you and ask to see your pass book and if you didn’t have one you could go to jail.

There were separate eating sections for black in restaurants and separate stores for them to shop in. It was a type of legal segragtion.

Like any law, when it was put into practice it probably made perfect sense at the time.

Many black Africans were part of these savage tribes that were extremely volatile and would not tolerate each other. One of the largest tribes that still exists today is the Zulus. These were some of teh fiercest and most feared warriors and even as a kid I remember the name - Shaka Zulu. Shaka was one of the greatest rulers ever of the Zulu empire and his “influence still casts a long shadow over Zulu history today.” (Wikipedia)

After reading a book called RAGE by Wilbur Smith I was able to better understand not only Apartheid, but the cruelty of segragation and slavery. What is more, I started to become proud of my African heritage for the first time in my life.

If you dig into the history of African people you see that they were some of the greatest warriors, hunters, trackers that ever lived. They killed lions with spears and hunted down elephants and shot them with bows and arrows that you had to use your entire body to shoot. Elephants have such thick skin that in order for the arrow to kill then they would construct these bows that you would hold with your feet and then pull the string back with two hands and while lying on the ground just ten feet away they would shoot an arrow the size of a spear and pierce the elephants heart.  All of this would be down wearing nothing but a loincloth over rough terrain and unbelievable heat.

I can’t imagine being one of these brave, proud warriors and then having some man, a white man of the likes that I had never seen, come into my village with a gun that made a sound that I had never heard and then chain up and drag me and my family away after having killed many.

Anger and fear and rage, the emotions that these people must have felt. I cannot even begin to imagine the horror.

I think many African Americans are still ashamed and trying to overcome the stereotypes and the racism that still exists in America today, but that is party our educational systems fault. We are taught about slavery and emancipation, but we aren’t educated about how the Africans were kidnapped from their homes and their babies were murdered.  We aren’t told about the sexual abuse or the fact that humans were treated worse than animals.

I think that if all Americans were given a history lesson and took a moment to learn more about all the people of the world and where they have come from, then maybe we would have a new respect for our brothers and sisters. We wouldn’t make fun of the way some people talk, we’d delight in it. We’d be in awe of African Americans who excel at more than just sports.  We wouldn’t talk about our Indian gas station owners in a negative way and we wouldn’t make racist jokes about hispanics and landscaping.

We all have a story, people should take the time to hear it.

Sort of makes you want to stop and think twice about getting in the cage and fighting a lion.