I Know I’m Not White On The Inside

So, I was asked if I was a chocolate bar, which one would I be?

One of my colleagues said she would be an Almond Joy because she was brown on the outside but white on the inside.

There was a misplaced pride in the statement, as if her sugary coconut was the one thing responsible for her appreciating the finer things in life, and she wanted to diss the 75% dark chocolate on the outside.

I felt at a loss trying to find a chocolate bar that represented me.

It wasn’t Almond Joy.

I knew I’m not white on the inside because I have been tubing in Kauai with my wife’s family, who is all white.

And tubing is not an activity brown people do.

The kind of calm and ease you need to bring to tubing is something inaccessible to us.

Brown people can’t just glide down the river, waiting for the river to take us where we need to go. We would prefer to erratically walk alongside the river and get to the end of it at our own pace.

We always have a pep in our step that comes from figuring out where the next bite is coming from, when the next paycheck is going to hit, from sliding our credit card and engaging our core as if proper form is going to make funds magically appear in your bank account.

So tubing is mortifying for me, and that’s how I know I’m not white on the inside.