Religious Tolerance 2/27/2009
I'm very tolerant of other people's religion...as long as they're not blowing anything up. I would never say anything to intentionally offend anyone when it comes to religious beliefs.
Here's what happened. As most of you know, I sell eyeglasses. Part of that "selling" requires fitting the patients with the glasses when they pick them up. I recently had a patient that was from somewhere "Indian". Could have been India or Pakistan...somewhere like that. Somewhere that I'M SURE they really, REALLY love cows. I know this is an assumption but I'm willing to play the odds - for conversation's sake.
I began fitting my patient...who happens to be a child. A child of Indian-ish descent.
Normally, a fair amount of adjustments need to be made to get the glasses fitting properly. In this case, though, the glasses seemed to be MADE for this child. I had to make no adjustments at all. Odd.
Now what happened next...or almost happened next...
What ran through my head - thankfully - isn't what came out of my mouth. Over the course of about 1.5 seconds this monologue went on in my head...
"Holy Cow these glasses fit him really well without any adjustments. No - wait. What if they worship cows...? That might offend them. They might want to start telling me how the cow - to their people is holy...a sacred thing. Then I'll have to tell them 'Yeah. Holy and Delicious'. That might not go well...."
So I went with...Wow these glasses fit him really well.
Good save.