WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS
While teaching in Malaysia with the Peace Corps, I was invited to spend a week with a student and his family. We bathed each morning in the river, and one time I displayed my athletic ability by swimming across the river and back. The village youngsters gave me an ovation as an older native commented, “It must be wonderful to have magic skin.” I assured him that my white skin was no different from his darker, olive-colored skin. “You’re wrong,” the man replied. “White skin must be magic. If one of us swam across that river, the crocodiles would eat him.” Charles White, in Reader’s Digest
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