The neighborhood blogs I read love to have “fish out of water” stories about white people moving to an all black neighborhood, particularly ChiKat and I Hate My Developer.  Sure I feel awkward sometimes and sure people treat me slightly differently or give me funny looks now and again.  There have been times when I wanted to explain to someone that I actually live in the neighborhood.  But nothing worth telling anybody about has ever happened to me.  Mostly things are sideways glances or other types of things that I could have just misunderstood, although I suspect I did not.

Today however, something decidedly odd happened.  I was walking over to the garden this morning and I heard someone speaking very loudly behind me.  An elderly black gentleman in an old beat up pickup was asking someone for directions and I could hear the man saying he didn’t live in the neighborhood so he wasn’t sure.  The man drove a little ways forward and asked the next person walking.  That person told him he didn’t know either.  The man then drove right past me without slowing and asked the next person who pointed him in the correct direction.

So there were 4 people walking and he asked all 3 of the others for directions (who all happened to be black), but pointedly skipped me.  I don’t know if he just didn’t feel comfortable talking to me or if he just assumed I couldn’t possibly live in the neighborhood and therefore wouldn’t be able to help.  I was actually anticipating him stopping to ask me and I was already hoping I would be able to help him out (I never actually heard the name of the street he was looking for).  I certainly wasn’t offended or anything that he didn’t stop, but it was certainly very odd.