Misunderstanding

Do you ever wonder how many times you have been misunderstood? At girl's camp, someone misunderstood something I said.

I was introduced to someone that looked like someone I grew up by and I thought she might possibly be her daughter. I asked, "Is your mother a Cutler?" She replied that she had been asked that before and I should see her baby pictures. I thought it was a weird response but we then went off doing our own thing.

Later I learned that when she saw me from a distance, she pointed me out to someone and told them that I asked her if her mom was a colored. The person replied, "Who says that these days?" She then said she wondered why I didn't ask if her father was a colored and why I would just assume it was her mother.  

Well luckily they found out from the person who introduced us what I really said and came to find me to have a good laugh about the misunderstanding. We laughed so hard that later I felt like I had overdone my ab work.  She did show me a baby picture from her iphone because she actually did look like she was African American and told me that she had been questioned several times on her ethnicity, just not quite like she thought I had asked her. I was just grateful that we were able to clear things up. I would hate to have her going through life thinking I was a prejudice person stuck the 60's.

It really does make me wonder how many times I have been misunderstood in this dramatic of a way and it never got clarified.