I was a small child at the zoo. I had lost my parents in the crowd, and was scared.

A nice black man (this was important because I grew up in a white neighborhood and hadn't encountered many black people before) knelt down to me and asked me if I was okay, if I was lost. They brought me to the zoo office where they called my parents.

I'll never forget how strange and different they were to the child me, and yet how kind they were in the sea of scary strangers.