I caught an inner chuckle the other day at work when we were bonding with our bosses in the kumbaya room (aka. conference room). I’m the only black woman and so I enjoy, from a distance, people awkwardly try to find some kind of way to include me in conversation. Usually, they don’t bother and I find my joy in identifying with something one of the boss people brings up trying to identify with someone else in the room. This time, it was The Hills. The other girl had no clue what “cool” boss who watched Entertainment Tonight the night before studying for this moment was referring to, and I went into this ramble about the whole show, its Laguna Beach roots, Justin Bobby, yadda, yadda, yadda…AND I would be remiss to not make eye contact with the boss man and say that I guess he figured her wrong and me wrong. He had that squirmish, awkward, tall white man entitled to superiority gone defunct moment. So maybe it wasn’t an inner chuckle, rather an inner belly laugh. It’s amazing what you learn when you just talk to someone and leave your biases behind. All of his research trying to identify with the women was flawed. He didn’t bank on the black girl factor in the room.