This past week I met an elderly woman in a small library close to where I’m living. Initially we didn’t speak and then we started making conversation. She looked like the kind of woman, a grandmother, probably a great-grandmother who might be searching for knitting magazines or a Reader’s Digest. A huge cloth book bag dangled from her arm.
“Dear, you look like a reader,” she said.
I nodded.
“Have your read this book? She rummaged around for a few moments in her bag and hauled out ‘The Lovely Bones’ by Alice Sebold. “What do you think?”
I gulped. Was she really reading such a hard-hitting novel? ”Ah yes, I’ve read it. It’s a tough slog, grim. Have you finished it?”
She shook her head. “I only read it in the afternoons. It’s too scary to read when it gets dark outside.”
“Yes.” And I felt strange. Embarassed at my assumption that because she was decades older than me, and looked a certain way, that she would only be interested in a certain kind of writing.
If I’m lucky and have good health and live to her age, hopefully I’ll be reading challenging novels as well. I walked home slowly, thinking about how I’d categorized her.
P. S. for those who haven’t read ‘The Lovely Bones’, Susie is a young girl who tells the story of her murder-and its aftermath-as she watches from heaven.
Have you made any assumptions lately?
What an interesting question, Jodie. I think like most people I make assumptions all the time – not even realizing it.
One of my journalism students pointed out the dangers just last week. I’d hauled a bunch of stuff out of my backpack, arranged it on a table in front of them, left it for half an hour while we talked about other things, and then I put all the stuff away and asked them to write descriptions of the items that had been on the table.
When they finished doing that, I asked them to describe what those items said about me.
One student said, “I can’t tell you that. I can only tell you what I infer from them.”
How’s that for a smart response?
And yet most of us judge books by their covers, don’t we?