When I was in elementary school, I went to a sleepover. One of the girls was Jewish and brought out a dreidel. I didn’t know much about dreidels, but I did know I have a tendency to miss important cues and could easily offend somebody by accident. She offered me to play, but all I could think about was “this is an important object to her and her religion. If I fuck up, I’ll definitely be offending her.”
I was terrified of doing something wrong, so I declined to play.
Turns out, that was the biggest fuck-up of all. She immediately started accusing me of being anti-Jewish. I was overwhelmed and confused, and no amount of explaining my reasoning could push away that accusation.
When I was working at a day care decades ago I didn’t want to read a kid’s book that was partially in Spanish, because I didn’t want to fuck up the pronunciation in front of actual Spanish speaking kids.
Ughhhhh, this drudged up a painful old memory.
When I was in elementary school, I went to a sleepover. One of the girls was Jewish and brought out a dreidel. I didn’t know much about dreidels, but I did know I have a tendency to miss important cues and could easily offend somebody by accident. She offered me to play, but all I could think about was “this is an important object to her and her religion. If I fuck up, I’ll definitely be offending her.”
I was terrified of doing something wrong, so I declined to play.
Turns out, that was the biggest fuck-up of all. She immediately started accusing me of being anti-Jewish. I was overwhelmed and confused, and no amount of explaining my reasoning could push away that accusation.
Anxiety strikes again.
When I was working at a day care decades ago I didn’t want to read a kid’s book that was partially in Spanish, because I didn’t want to fuck up the pronunciation in front of actual Spanish speaking kids.
I’ll never live that racist reputation down.
I’m sorry that happened to you, but it helps to know I’m not the only one that had such a misunderstanding.