Acknowledgements in passing

I have been surprised, throughout the pandemic period, at the behavior of people passing me on paths. Many times I have passed people and groups in the woods and I have stepped off the path to allow for the statutory six feet of distance. In fact I have been biased towards giving people more space than that wherever feasible because, why not? Margin of safety, right?

But so often people do not say thank you, nor do they make eye contact, nor basically acknowledge the gesture, particularly given that there was no real reason why it should have been me making way for them and not the other way round. Basically, as far as I'm concerned, these are auslander, they are not from North Carolina, nor have they been adequately instructed in our ways.

And we see the same thing on streets, in grocery stores, what have you. So when yesterday in the Harris Teeter near where 86 hits 40, an "older" (OK, he was probably about my actual age if not my self-concept age) African-American guy made eye contact with me from over his mask, nodded and said "how you doin?", I was almost moved to tears. I felt like I was home.

Some of you may ask: why, Clark, are you noting his guy's race? Does it matter? In some sense it does. Most of the culturally southern white males in the store weren't wearing masks, nor were they really paying attention to those around them. And most of the culturally non-southern people in the store who were wearing masks weren't acknowledging people as they passed. Only with the black guy did I feel at home. It's entirely possible that if he took off his mask, I might have recognized him from high school, or perhaps from playing pickup at Umstead back in the day.