Yesterday, I donated my ninety-second pint of blood at Bloodworks Northwest (a name that is much cooler, and more quasi-gruesome than the previous “Puget Sound Blood Bank”).
Yep. 92 pints. That’s 11 ½ gallons.
That’s a lot of blood.
But I digress.
As part of the donation procedure, I had “the interview” (which, at Bloodworks, is now totally computerized instead of the old, awkward, behind-a-screen confab wherein we chat about my sexual history and past intravenous drug use), followed by the collection of vitals via sphygmomanometers and pin pricks. Then it was over to the chaise longue for the poke and pour segment of the event, (i.e., the point of the visit) which, oddly, is the shortest part of the whole shebang (5.25 minutes out of the hour-long process). Finally, after a V-8 and a cookie at the “canteen,” I was on my way home.
None of this was unusual. I’ve been through it before. Ninety-one times over the past quarter century, to be exact.
What was unusual was my conversation with the phlebotomist.
It was unusual not only because I was uncharacteristically chatty—I can pass as an extrovert, if required, but it’s a stretch—but rather because I was struck by how much hope I felt after talking with this young man. He is, in many ways, what I think America is all about.
He is an immigrant. He was born in Eritrea and spent his early youth there. Then, after some time in Italy (did you know that Italy colonized what is now Eritrea? I didn’t), his family came to America to find better opportunities. He studied, went to university, and is now working in the health care industry.
He was a thoroughly pleasant young man, and we talked of many things as he tested and jabbed and bled me into a bag. We talked about Eritrea and the history of the region. We spoke of travel, of my years in Jerusalem, and his in Milan. We compared notes on how to scramble eggs. He told me of his experience with a “study abroad” program, where he spent time in Tahiti (Tahiti? Boy, did I go to the wrong colleges), living with locals and learning about Tahitian culture and history. Together, we explored the meaning of “cultural appropriation,” and of what might and might not be examples of that phenomenon. I told him of Bill Bryson, whose book I’m currently reading.
We did not talk about the weather. We did not talk about politics. We did not try to solve the world’s problems.
We were simply two humans from radically different backgrounds and ethnicities, talking about subjects of substance, learning about each other and about different parts of our world, and enjoying the hell out of it.
The acreage of common ground we trod during that hour was simply remarkable.
I wish it wasn’t remarkable, though.
We all have this common ground.
After this week’s gallery of incredibly offensive images, of anger and violence, of amazingly divisive rhetoric, and of the sort of backwater political maneuvering and moral silences that beggar the mind, the fact that two strangers from such radically different races, cultures, and ethnicity could have an hour-long conversation that ranged from tattoos to the culinary arts and not once feel uncomfortable, or angry, or bitter, well, it heartened me.
Common ground is where most of us live every day. Once that dog-whistle blows, though, we retreat to our barren fringes, and shout at each other across the fertile fields of our similarity.
But not this time. We two, we stayed on that common ground. We owned that common ground. And I felt that, if we two can do it, we can all do it, if we want to. When there’s so much at stake as there is in the world today, it’s all that more important to try.
It was a pleasant surprise, though, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like we just might get through this.
Together.
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Here’s the problem, you live on the wrong side of the Interstate-5 freeway. The Eritreans are over here, also the Somailis and etc.
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It’s fairly diverse on this side, too, but mostly South Pacific Islanders and Eastern Asian folks.
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