It's Important to Make these Things Clear
While idly conversing at work.
——-
ME: Man, I feel terrible…I’ve got some sort of illness bred in the heat of central Africa—
COWORKER (interjecting): You have AIDS?
ME: And then it came over here on a monkey boat.
(Laughter, questions about what was so funny.)
COWORKER: He said he was sick from an African monkey boat.
(Pause while I consider my words.)
ME: By which I mean a boat with actual monkeys on it; that was not a racist comment.
