"Why do white people read?"

I'm in Burger King today, alone. Grab a paperback in my truck, order, get my food, sit down.

A couple of booths away is a well-dressed middle-aged black woman, a little girl who I take for her granddaughter, and an older woman I assume to be her mother.

When the older woman and girl go off for a minute, she asks, 'Who is it that got you interested in reading?' I told her my father never got to go to college, in fact, finished high school in the Army (1951), but read everything he could get his hands on.

Whenever he finished reading something, I would grab it up and read it, so I was reading waaay ahead of my grade level.

So she says she sees people when she's travelling, on cruises, on the beach, etc. reading. She said, " I never even think about reading when I'm travelling, and I'm a teacher. And I always wondered why those people were reading."

I said "What people?". she said, "White people".