Life in a small town, racism and a story I'd like to share.

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I have a story to share... Once upon a time, I was a kid growing up in a small town. My family life was a little rough and I was a little shy. I found, however, a nice friend in Kindergarten and her name was Patty. Patty was a very nice girl and we would play together at recess. None of the other kids seemed to like her. Once I was invited over to her house and I met her father. He was a big tall black man. Dark black. I looked at him with interest. See, in my small town, I hadn't seen any black men. Now, there were black people on Sesame Street, but they also had blue fuzzy monsters. After a moment, I turned and went back to playing with Patty. It didn't matter to me one tiny little bit if her dad was black, white, or purple. She was my friend. I got it in my head on May Day to make a heart basket out construction paper and fill it with wildflowers. (These are also known as weeds, but she didn't seem to mind.) Turns out her Father was really her step father. That would have made sense to me at the time if I had any idea about genetics and inheritance. See, Patty was as white as I was. Patty's mother had re-married and married a black man. (At the time, African American wasn't the term used.) Patty and her family moved away after a little bit. I don't know for sure how long. I was told that the townsfolk had 'run them out of town.' It would take some time to piece together things.. how people might not like 'mixed' couples and all that. But, the point of the story here isn't if they were really run out of town or not. I was never able to check up on that. No, the point of the story is that as a kid I believed it was possible for my friend to be run out of town because her mother remarried a man with darker skin. (And, he wasn't just any old thug.. he was, in fact, the town deputy.) If I had not had this experience, I might have been a racist, too. I was raised in a small town and neither my father nor my siblings seem particularly fair-minded. I like to think I have a kinder heart than that, but perhaps my ideas of racial fairness trace back to this one little experience and what it meant to me.