Another Lesson on Judging Others

I recently wrote a post about an exercise I did in one of my special education classes recently.  Feel free to go read it if you haven't already but the gist of it is that we read a passage about a seemingly barbaric uncivilized tribe of people when in actuality the passage was really about Americans it was just written in a way that made the things that we do sound barbaric.

I wanted to share with you another story along the same lines of not judging people based on their outward appearance or on things that you deem not normal.  I heard this story in the same class and it is a true story.

A few years ago when my teacher was doing this same lesson on perspective and not judging others a girl in his class told him about something that happened to her one night at work.  She worked in the children's clothing department in a department store at the mall.  She saw a man with real long ratty hair, a scruffy unkempt beard, and dressed in really ratty looking clothes.  She said she kept thinking to herself that this guy was going to steal something and thinking that it was weird for a man that looks like that to be shopping in the children's section.  She made an immediate judgment based on what he looked like.

Finally, the man walked over to the register with a few outfits.  The girl rang him up and he handed her one of those super special no limit platinum credit cards.  She of course immediately thought that the card must be stolen.  Until she looked at the name on the card.

It was Willie Nelson.

He was in town for a concert and was staying at the hotel that connects to the department store and he had stopped by the store to buy some clothes for his grandchildren.