So, I’m at the mechanic’s getting my car checked out. This white Fort Worth cop looks to be in his late fifties. He’s slightly less overweight and a bit taller, but looks kinda like that main cop from Breaking Bad. As I’m waiting, I’m watching Sense 8 on Netflix, headphones in, holding my phone at eye level. The cop is talking at the counter about his car, and I’m sitting on his right, about 30-40 feet away.
I feel a glare, so I look up from watching the show on my phone, and he’s looking straight at me, suspiciously and nervously. Which prompts the same look from me — only a few seconds later does it dawn on me that my camera is pointed straight at his face.
He sees the confusion in my eyes. He nods, wary but understanding. I do the same. I turn my phone in another direction.
But something about what we saw in each other’s eyes for those three seconds has me tearing up, and I feel like it has helped me understand something that could not be expressed in a million Internet arguments or words.
It’s melodramatic, but true…those three seconds changed something about me or my perspective or how I feel and I’m not sure exactly how. It’s a conflict of anger and understanding mutually felt, it seemed…
I think it’s the realization, possibly, that we’re just humans, trapped in our social positions, who glimpsed, for a moment, across the divide. You’re you, and I’m me, and you’re there, and I’m here, and that’s OK in a way even though, in a more disturbing way, it’s not…
Or something like that.
*sigh*
I dunno, man. Sometimes…I just don’t know.
The world — it’s so many awkward shades of gray.