I was out at the monthly Gallery Walk in Brattleboro tonight, on a whim.  The sidewalks were teeming with youth — not college students either, but young teens and tweens who’d probably been cooped up by the weather and thus took the relatively mild evening by storm.  (One girl complained to her friends, who were contemplating popping into a record store, “I want air!  I wanna be outside!  You can go wherever but I’m staying out here!”)

At one point I came outside to so much noise that I thought there was a fight or a small riot, but it turned out it was just a particularly large group of friends horsing around — though in a way that sent one down to the pavement, and I felt myself hovering to make sure it wasn’t a kid being jumped.

Well at one point these two run up to me, and one says “Shake my hand!”  And as I’m about to put my gloves on and do so — in part because my fingers were feeling the cold, and in part because I was feeling a little germ-anxious today — the other tries to push his hand away as a joke and exclaims “Don’t!  He has AIDS!”

I couldn’t, really couldn’t, let that go.

So I shook his hand and I turned amicably to the other, and said “You know, I’ve worked with people who have HIV and AIDS, and that’s not okay.”

“It’s not?”

“No.  You can’t spread AIDS by shaking hands, and it’s really hurtful to say that.  But I’m going to shake your hand too because I think you’re still a good person.”

…and he glanced at me, utterly baffled, and shook my hand, and the two walked off in contemplative silence for half a block.  They still looked a little confused when reached their friends down a ways.

I have no idea if that made any difference or not but at least I know they were thinking about it.