Larry goes green

Larry Portman was racist. Now, don't get me wrong - he wasn't a racist. He certainly didn't belong to any neo-Nazi or white supremacist groups. The very idea of that would have horrified him. He considered himself to be very accepting of others, no matter what. After all, he had several black friends - well, maybe not friends, exactly. I mean they were certainly acquaintances and he liked them all just fine. He just had nothing in common with them, that's all. There were several black families in the neighborhood that he stopped and talked to often when he walked the dog. Of course he didn't invite them to his cookouts, but only because he didn't want them to feel uncomfortable.

Then, there was work. Larry was the manager of all of the mechanics at the Donaldson Specialty Textiles plant where he worked. There were many fine mechanics there that were black. When the time came to promote someone to the position of shift supervisor, he considered everyone equally. Al Hanson was one of the best mechanics he knew, and would have been a really good supervisor, but he just couldn't choose him. It wasn't because Al was black that Larry didn't promote him. He just wasn't sure he could trust him. That was just a gut feeling, and you've got to follow your gut, right? Of course there were some complaints, but Larry's boss had backed him up and the HR department dismissed the whole thing.

It had been a little over two years since that incident and things weren't going so well for Larry's company. Those darn foreigners were getting all the business that should have gone to Donaldson. He was working alone one Saturday afternoon, inspecting a small leak in a fitting on the green dye tank. He was leaning over the guard rail to get a better look, when the earthquake hit.

It was really just a small temblor, a 3.9, but it startled Larry causing him to lose his footing and fall over the railing and into the tank. He screamed for help, but then remembered that he was alone in the plant. He swam to the other side of the tank and tried several times to climb the maintenance ladder, but the dye was slippery and he kept losing his grip and plunging back into the tank. It took a good fifteen minutes of climbing and falling before he finally struggled over the edge of the tank and collapsed, exhausted.

It was several hours later that Larry woke up, soaked literally to the skin in green dye. It was 8:30 in the evening, and starting to get dark outside. He was embarrassed about falling into the tank, so he decided to just go home rather than call anyone. He walked through the plant to the other end where his car was parked, leaving green footprints most of the way. By the time he got to his car, most of the dye had dried, but he could feel that some was still damp. He didn't want to take a chance on getting any green dye on his seats, and since he only lived about 10 blocks away, he decided to walk.

By the time he got home, all of the dye had dried. He went through the garage and straight to the basement where he stripped off all of his clothes and found an old rag to remove any remaining wet dye, then went up the basement stairs planning to get in the shower and wash the stuff off. Before he could get to the bathroom, though, his wife came around the corner and at first screamed at the naked green man in her kitchen, then began to laugh. He suffered the gales of laughter from his wife for a few seconds, then moved on to the shower.

The shower of course, did no good. This was permanent dye - a special job for some military uniforms. No matter how hot the water, how much soap or how much scrubbing, it would not come off. He knew the dye was not dangerous and would just have to wear off.

He spent most of the next day, Sunday, watching TV and wondering what he would do on Monday. He finally decided that he was still Larry Portman. Nothing had really changed. He would just explain the situation and everything would be fine.

As he walked the dog the next morning, there were a lot of stares, whispers and furtive glances. Someone yelled, "Hey, Mr. Martian, should I take you to my leader?" He ignored them as best he could, but still cut the walk short, retreating to the security of his house.

The next day at work, the laughter and joking began. The pictures were going viral on pretty much every social media platform in existence. The jokes and laughter slowed eventually, but the whispers continued. Conversations would suddenly stop when he entered a room. He almost always ate lunch alone and worst of all, he was excluded from meetings that he had always been a part of. His boss explained that it would be too distracting for him to be there.

Larry finally began to understand that looking different from other people was all it took to change the way a person was treated. His mistreatment was caused by his own carelessness and would likely end when the dye finally wore off. Others were treated even worse simply because they were born with a different color of skin or had an accent from their own native language.

He began to see his own prejudices for what they were - judgments of someone's worth based only on their appearance, the way they spoke or the country they were from. He examined every aspect of his life and promised himself that his cookouts and who he promoted would be only the beginning of the changes he would make.