Fear of sitting in crowded, black spaces

There are two types of black people in the world: 1.) those that can walk right into a church on Easter Sunday, “sit” the highest five seats, and take a look at the ushers to just accept that those seats are taken; or 2.) me.

I’m the kind of person, and I represent the kind of black people, who hate being asked to sit down anywhere. I almost never feel anxious in public and I’m rarely nervous or concerned about who’s around me. But after I am in a public place and someone who just isn’t there and is not going to be there for some time asks me to sit down, I get anxious. I sweat. I stress. I fade quickly after which hand over. I don’t like to sit down for other people and I don’t ask people to sit down for me. I don’t prefer to put my burdens on the riverbank of the one who was on time.

But unfortunately, in the black community, “holding seats” is a thing—a sport, even. I’ve seen (and I mean this with dead seriousness; “without a hat,” as the children would say) an elderly black woman tell an usher in church that she was holding seats, and get mad on the ushers who suggested she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t consider they thought she couldn’t hold a row of seats, and so they couldn’t consider she couldn’t consider she couldn’t do it. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. My wife is one of those individuals who will hold all of the requested seats and risk a public demonstration of “Who’s going to break first, loudly?” over said seats. She’ll even be very mad at me after I can’t do it. Marriage, right?

If I’ll, I would really like to share with you all a recent experience I had attempting to get a seat that not only threw me out of the constructing, but threw me into an overcrowded room where I could now not see anything on account of the stress of attempting to get a seat for somebody. Also, as you may see, I failed this task with flying colours.

Just a few weeks ago, a famous friend of mine was giving a speak about books at a famous Washington landmark. I had been to that bookstore before—persistently—and had attended many of that friend’s talks. A math problem was about to pop into my head; there was absolutely no way that store could accommodate the number of individuals who would show up for that talk. Spoiler alert: I used to be right.

Lifestyle

Since I consider myself a forward-thinking person, I anticipated this math problem and got to the shop early enough to get a seat, but late enough to get one of, for example, three remaining seats. Many people should have been pondering the identical thing I used to be occupied with math, not math, given the space constraints of the shop. Anyway, I went in and sat down on a stool, then watched the parade of people, mostly black, who got here in after me, attempting to determine where to sit down. As an increasing number of people, especially older blacks, entered, I prepared to present up my seat and use my younger legs to face for your entire show.

And then I got a text from a friend asking me to avoid wasting a spot for her. Now that friend cannot stand for long, I had to avoid wasting her a spot (which I used to be already willing to present up) or we’d have to depart together; that wasn’t an option; we were there to see our friend be amazing and do her own thing.

But here’s the issue: My friend who asked for a seat was a minimum of quarter-hour away, and the stream of people coming in was growing. On top of that, my seat was in the aisle where people were coming in, which meant that everybody, including women who looked like my grandmother, could see that I used to be NOT giving up my seat. I looked like a young kid on a subway automotive not giving up her seat to seniors or pregnant women. The thing is, I knew why I wasn’t getting up, but they didn’t, and I couldn’t look my grandmother in the face and say, “Hey, I would give up my seat for you, but I would save it for a woman younger than you but older than me who potentially has a leg problem and wouldn’t care if you didn’t get it.” No one asked, they simply watched.

I used to be sweating an increasing number of with every passing minute and an increasing number of people were observing me. I do not know if that truly happened or not but that is the way it felt and I felt uncomfortable and judged. I used to be texting my mate with my ETA and he kept saying “I’ll be there in 5 minutes” for over 5 minutes. I let her know I didn’t think I could sit any longer because I used to be beginning to seem like I hadn’t been raised properly.

Then the book event organizer took the microphone and identified that there have been issues with the seating and that those of us who could should hand over our seats to those that were older than us or might need to sit down down, and I felt like she was talking on to me when she said that. She mentioned the overflow situation outside on the back patio instead for all of us who either needed a seat or had to present up our seats. At this point, my stress and anxiety were at their peak; my heart was beating fast and my palms were sweaty. I could not take it anymore. I stood up from my seat and without anyone, said, “The seat is free,” and quickly ran to the overflow spot while texting my friend that I could not hold on to my seat any longer.

It’s been weeks since that night and I still remember how I felt attempting to keep the place going. I felt really uncomfortable and I knew my wife could be high quality. Oh, and concerning the overbooking situation – it was awful. The place had no idea what they were doing and arrange a projector TV during sunset so nobody could see what was happening. Cool idea, terrible execution, but a minimum of I wasn’t stressed anymore. I used to be briefly annoyed that the place hadn’t thought to order a bigger space for the lecture considering who that they had brought, but that is in the past now.

Now it’s OK; thanks for asking. But one thing is obviously, and two things are obviously: next time I’m going right into a place that I do know can be crowded, I’ll just skip the entire sitting thing and prepare to face in the front, back, or side. Sure, my back might hurt and my legs might ache, but a minimum of I won’t feel stressed or judged.

If you’ve gotten a friend who cannot hold seats, please don’t force them to. It’s an excessive amount of.

Thank you for coming to my talk in Panama.