A week ago, I was heading out for a quick lunch in downtown Peoria. Local restaurants bring carts downtown by the courthouse with various menu items. Now that I have multiple offices for an assignment I am on, I get the benefit of being able to enjoy a larger variety for lunch. As I walked past the courthouse I saw an individual of African American descent (is that the proper classification these days?) walk past an individual of Anglo Saxon heritage standing by a retaining wall. The guy standing must have said something to the guy walking by because he turned back to talk to the guy standing. As soon as the walking guy recognized him, he put out his right hand for the standard greeting handshake. He literally stood there with hand out for close to 30 seconds while conversing back and forth. The standing guy never took his hand out of his pockets nor even changed his expression to acknowledge the extended hand. Finally the shake initiator raised his elbow up higher to draw further attention to the request for a shake… no response. In a last desperate attempt he switched hands and tried to get the guy to shake the other hand but that was met with the exact same lack of acknowledgment. Finally the guy turned back and continued on his way. I found this very strange. There was no change in voice tone that I could tell so it was not an issue of being angry, just a complete lack of desire to shake his hand. I wish I could have actually heard the conversation to be able to determine if the visuals matched what was actually going on. For all I know the standing guy could have been completely paralyzed in both arms and was unable to remove them from his pocket – of course, Biden would have demanded that he extend his arms anyway – maybe the standing guy saw him spit into both his hands earlier in the day. He certainly could not have felt threatened in the presence of the universal sign for “I am not carrying a weapon” and he did not even twitch to the opposite direction.
Anyway, I thought it was odd and that is what this site is all about.
Life Intrigued 