ArcaMax

I went out to buy envelopes Tuesday.

When you're semiretired, as I am, those small tasks become the day.

"Well," you say to your wife when you wake up, "I gotta go buy some envelopes today."

I walked to a chain drug store. They had envelopes. You got a box of 100 for $2.99.

The woman behind the cash register looked, as my father used to say, "like the rest of the girls." Brown hair, longish. Maybe 35. Not much makeup. She looked like most of the people you'll see in most places.

And she was wearing a navy-blue sweatshirt that said "DIVERSITY" across the front in block letters. Each letter was in the colors of the rainbow flag they fly at the gay pride parade. They fly it in other places, too, but they always fly it at the gay pride parade.

"She's diverse," I said to myself, "or she loves someone who is diverse, or she likes diversity as a principle."

I'm diverse myself. We all are. We're all the same, but we're all different, something the human race isn't so good at understanding these days or any days.

A Jewish guy who loves his wife is diverse from me because he's Jewish and I'm a Catholic, but he's the same as me because he loves his wife. If he likes Irish whiskey on the rocks, he's diverse from me because he likes ice in his whiskey, but he's the same as me because he likes Irish whiskey.

I know where I live, and I know when I'm living, and you gotta say something about it once in a while, but you should say it quiet. Don't get out in the street with a banner demanding that people be forced to stop putting ice in their whiskey.

So, I got to the head of the small drug store cash register line, and I paid the $2.99 for the envelopes, and the woman in the DIVERSITY shirt asked me if I wanted a bag, and I said yes. I always say yes to a bag.

"Always get a bag," my mother told me when I was a kid. "If you walk out just holding something in your hand, they might think you stole it."

"Nice shirt," I said to the woman.

And there was silence.

"No," I said. "It's a nice shirt. I'm glad you're wearing it."

And she smiled.

"Thank you," she said.

I know where I live, and I know when I'm living. I knew why she was quiet the first time I said, "Nice shirt."

I have silver hair, and I look my late-60s age. I smell like pipe tobacco, and I have a residual twang in my voice from doing part of my growing up in Missouri.

Seeing that, hearing me, she had every right to believe I was saying "nice shirt" sarcastically and I'd ask to see the manager to complain about an employee "shoving her liberal agenda down my throat."

Or maybe I'd ask her if she was a "DEI hire," which is a pretty nosy question coming from a man who just bought a cheap box of envelopes.

But that's where I live and when I'm living, and you gotta say something about it once in a while, even if you say it quiet.

To find out more about Marc Dion, and read words by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.