Yesterday I watched To Kill a Mockingbird. Again. It's one of my favorite movies, and my blog is named after a passage in the book/movie. There are so many good things in that story, but one part stood out to me yesterday as it always does. The kids are at the courthouse spying on Atticus while Tom Robinson is being charged. Dill is looking through the window, descibing what he sees, and says the judge looks like he's sleeping, and there's a black man crying. Dill wondered what the black man had done to cry about.

I'm always affected by that. It's interesting that we assume certain things about people. It never occurred to Dill that Tom was crying because someone did something to him.

I lived my life a very long time in two realities. One was inside of me and the other for everybody else. I am sure people assumed all sorts of things, but they never knew the truth. I try not to do that to people. Tracy is like that, too. One of the millions of reasons I love him. I hope our children can learn to accept people and have some mercy.

“An‘ they chased him ’n‘ never could catch him ’cause they didn’t know what he looked like, an‘ Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of
those things… Atticus, he was real nice…”
His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me.
“Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”