Foot in Mouth

Be careful what you say and how you say it, it might bite you in the butt.

Many years ago my brother, Jason, Brad and myself were playing the video game Bond 007 for the Nintendo 64. If you’re not familiar with the game, you run around shooting each other, dressed like James Bond or characters from the movie.

During the game, someone kept running around in circles, not really shooting anything but acting like a spaz. I find it funny when people do this because serious gamers get all pissed because they take the game so seriously and when others don’t, they get mad.

Such was the case with Brad. He yells out, “who’s running around like a monkey?”

Bad choice of words on two levels; first, it was Jason who was running around and second, Jason is African American.

Not only is Jason African American but he one of those guys who gets very easily offended by any racism, even if it was by accident. It wasn’t that Brad was being racist, he was saying it because he meant it in a completely different way.

You could cut the tension in the room with a chainsaw. I looked at Jason, who was fighting mad. Brad looked like he just accidentally killed someone’s cat.

Then the real fun began. Brad tried to get himself out of what he said.

“Not that black people are monkeys. Or that monkeys look like black people. Or that black people and monkeys are in any way related…”

Talk about digging yourself into a hole. I had to step in and make sure that Jason understood that Brad didn’t mean what he said. Eventually, Jason was cool and understood it was just a mistake. We actually laughed about it afterwards.

But it just proves the old axiom, ‘Think before you speak…”