Uniform behavior: The danger of assumptions

The little boy looked as if he had stepped right out of a Norman Rockwell painting into the line at the shopping center.

And he was pointing at me and exclaiming, “Mommy! Mommy! Look. A real-life cowboy.”

Sure, I grew up on a ranch, and lately I’ve had a midlife crisis and bought — no, not a red convertible and a bomber jacket — a western hat. But I’m about as natural around horses as a Wall Street CEO would be flipping burgers at the McDominance franchise.

The point is, we all wear uniforms. And a lot of the way we are treated depends on assumptions about those uniforms.

And I’m not talking just post office workers, airline employees, prison guards or members of the armed forces. I’m talking about everybody.

One of my heroes growing up was a minister. This fellow, in perhaps the only memorable sermon of his career, uttered what in our congregation was considered a bad word. He said the word assume means “making an ass out of you and me.”

The bottom line, he said, is don’t assume anything.

Perhaps you’re like me. If so, sorry. When we see a person in a suit, we assume upward mobility or brainpower. When we see a guy in coveralls with the name Mike or Joe stitched on the front breast pocket, we assume mechanical know-how.

Think about how you respond to the guy in the $2,500 Brioni suit as compared to the guy with the burr in his Levis. Think about how you respond to black-wearing conformists, the spandex crowd, skinheads, people in Army boots, Bermuda shorts-wearing tourists, a woman in polyester pants, the scantily clad, the real-fur crowd, the man in the leopard-print robe.

Fashion puts our mind to spinning, if we’re not careful, in all sorts of assumptions.

When I pumped gas for a weekend — a job designed to help me recommit to further education — it was assumed I could be yelled at. Never had I seen so much flaunting of superiority. People with the brainpower of rutabagas were taking on the persona of Gen. Patton and getting out all their frustrations on me, the lowly gas pumper.

When I pose as a humor columnist, it’s just the opposite. People give me the benefit of the doubt. They laugh even when I write things that are only marginally funny.

At least some readers do.

Over the weekend, I was bicycling on my old Huffy. I was wearing baggy tan shorts and no shirt. I ran into several bicyclists in extremely fancy gear riding bicycles that cost as much as some people’s cars.

None of the bicyclists waved back when I waved at them.

Maybe they were too much in shock looking at my exposed love handles and pasty body.

Or maybe they didn’t think of me as a legitimate bicyclist, not realizing I had all the real gear back home and was just out of uniform.

Or maybe they just were insufferable exercise snobs.

We all wear uniforms, whether consciously or not.

The point is, when we run into grocery store clerks, gas station attendants, telemarketers or whatever, we should assume that they are a lot like us — just trying to make a living and keep the lights on and the mortgage paid. Most likely, they wouldn’t mind getting a friendly greeting and some respect.

We should try to look at the person of character behind the uniform.

By the way, I told my young friend that the cowboy life is all it’s cracked up to be. I said dream big. And then I rode off into the big box-store sunset.

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