Perceptions

From Google:
Perception: pərˈsepSH(ə)n
     1.  the state of being or process of becoming aware of something through the senses
     2.  a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something; a mental impression
     3.  intuitive understanding and insight

Perceptions can be wrong.

My brother tells good stories and some of them are mostly true. This one probably is entirely true.

It happened back in 1970 or 71. Matt was in his twenties. He had longish hair that he wore in a pony tail and he drove a VW micro mini bus, undecorated. Maybe he had a beard, too. I can't remember. I've seen him both clean-shaven and bearded so many times that I don't even notice.

Now being young with long hair and driving a micro mini bus might not have attracted attention in San Francisco at the time or in Boulder, Colorado, today, for that matter. But he lived in Oklahoma City and the Vietnam war raged on. Perceptions and public sentiment were not on his side.

He worked the second shift at Western Electric. (They made telephones for AT&T. Telephones that people today wouldn't recognize as anything but props from an old movie.)

He was driving home from work in the middle of a weekday, hot summer night. The streets were nearly empty and the homes were all dark.

Those old buses didn't have air conditioning, at least his didn't. So he had the windows rolled down to get what little cool air there was.

There were lots of things those old buses didn't have. Push button windows. Seat belts. 5-mile-an-hour bumpers. They didn't go fast and they crumpled on impact. I'm sure they wouldn't be legal to import by today's safety standards.

Matt pulled up to a red light and stopped. Some old dude, properly tonsured and wearing a suit, pulled up behind him in a convertible, top down.

The man started shouting at Matt. "Get off the road, you damn hippie."

Matt was tired from work and just wanted to get home.

The old guy revved his engine, shouted epithets about cowardice and aspersions against the VW bus. All ending with "you damn hippie."

At six feet, a hundred and eighty-five or ninety and with a background of high school wrestling and football, Matt could be formidable.

With the traffic light still red, Matt got out of his bus and walked back to the man in the convertible. He leaned over the open car toward the rude driver and spoke quietly, clearly.

"Mister, hippies don't believe in violence, and I ain't no damn hippie."

Without waiting for the green light, the old dude gunned his convertible and sped around Matt's VW micro mini bus.

Perceptions can change.