Stop. Look. You may discover something

Recently, I sat next to an African-American man named Herman in an East Coast airport. He was wearing a red U.S. Marine Corp baseball hat.

"Are you a veteran?"

"Yes, I am," he said. "Vietnam."

"Thank you for serving, sir."

"Thank you for saying that," he smiled and nodded.

"Of course."

"We didn't get that kind of response when we came home."

"I've heard. That's awful. I'm sorry for that." Again, he thanked me for thanking him for serving.

He then proceeded to tell me about a prolific career in law enforcement after his military service. And although he's now retiredt, he shared with me that he'd just come from conducting security training to a class of university law enforcement officers.

"I sat under a tree and acted like I was homeless," he told me, explaining that his findings to this experiment would be used for his training ice breaker.

"Really?"

"Yes," he laughed. "Let me show you," he said as he thumbed through his cell phone looking for pictures.

"Who took these?"

"I did," he chuckled.

He had put on a fake mustache, wore a beanie cap, added makeup to his face to look like bruises, made sure his clothing was disheveled and unkempt, his posture, slouched, and his bag of things, a mess. Then, he waited for his law-enforcement trainees to walk by.

"Only one asked, 'How you doing, sir?' he said. "And one woman even went out of her way to avoid me," he added.

"Did you later tell her that?"

"I sure did," he grinned.

Here's how Herman opened his training: "Do any of you know me?"

"Your face looks real familiar," the captain — who had spoken to Herman disguised as a homeless person — said. No one else claimed to know him.

"I was that homeless person sitting under that tree outside," Herman told them.

"Oh, my goodness," said the captain in disbelief. The others were in disbelief, too, and said so through the rolling of their eyes, the "wows," the whispers, the chuckles and by the shaking of their heads.