I had just pulled into the parking lot for the Salvation Army Thrift Store on Hope Street, and gotten out of my car, when I heard the voice. It was a male’s loud and angry voice, yelling at someone. When I looked up I saw a white man driving a small pickup truck past where I was standing, about to turn left onto Olive Street, and I heard him yell, “You (something or other) N.”

I was so surprised, and outraged, that I started yelling at him, “Keep going, keep going.” After I heard him yell something back at me, I yelled again, this time calling him “white trash.” (I’m white by the way.) That didn’t make him happy, but he did continue driving down Olive Street, and that was the end of it.

I looked around, saw a few people standing within earshot, but nobody said anything to me. I had no idea who the guy in the pickup truck was, who he was yelling at, but I was still there, by myself, and feeling . . . unsettled I’d say.

I don’t remember hearing somebody yelling like that in public before. And because it took me by such surprise, I just reacted. He was angry, and I responded angrily. In hindsight though, I wish that instead of calling him “white rash”, that I’d said something like, “Nobody wants to hear that kind of talk around here.” I wish that I’d been feeling calm enough to have said that, because that was the proper message to deliver at the time. But it’s not what I said, and I’m owning that. I guess that because I was caught so off guard, and was so unprepared for hearing something like that, I literally didn’t know what to do, and just did, something.

I wish that it had never happened in the first place. It all felt so mean and ugly, which is not the way I want to live in the world. But sometimes, the world is just what it is, and you make your choices what to do about it.

When I got home later, I called a good friend of mine because I needed to talk about what had just happened. She said that at least I’d done something, versus not saying anything, and that by itself was a good thing. Not the best choice of words, but given the circumstances, she understood. And she also reminded me that this was an example of our “white privilege.” We don’t have to think ahead of time what to do if, “something comes up.” If we end up in a confrontation over our race. It just simply doesn’t happen to us! That was a sobering moment.

Later that day I called another old friend of mine to talk. He and I have known each other for almost 40 years. He also happens to be Black. We both grew up in Boston, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, with very different experiences of course. We haven’t talked about race and discrimination all that much over the years, but have begun to more lately. When I asked him what it’s been like growing up, and living in this racist society, he said that he’s accustomed to it, and that he can’t avoid it like I can. He wasn’t speaking angrily towards me, just truthfully. That he is, and has to be, conscious of things that I don’t even have to think about.

He no longer lives in Boston, but is still in an urban setting, and “things happen” there. Sometimes it’s something so small, like a white woman moving her handbag from one arm to the other when they pass on the sidewalk. That’s never happened to me, and is one of the privileges I take for granted as a white man. He doesn’t take things for granted, but for what they are. And he said that he was glad that I said something to “that guy” earlier in the day.

It’s taken me a whole week to finally sit down and write this. Why bother? Why write something when most people around here don’t even know me, and might not read it? Because this has been a learning experience for me, and maybe someone will get something from reading about it. Thanks a lot.

Russ Pirkot lives in Greenfield.