Appearances can be so deceiving and stereotypes far too easy to believe.
I guess it’s only natural for us to try shoving everything and everyone we come across into a pigeonhole. We want to get it all nicely classified and categorized so it all makes sense; or at least it seems to make sense.
But stereotypes shackle you to ignorance. A good quote to illustrate the point was penned by a Mr. Brett Hart, a contemporary of Mark Twain. “It’s not what you don’t know that makes you ignorant, it’s what you know that ain’t so.”
The sight of 800 bikers at the Boogie Bash is a good opportunity for a person to test-drive their own stereotypes. The participants look pretty intimidating at first but after you start talking to them and listen to stories of the work done by the Association For Injured Motorcyclists (AIM), the blinders start to fall away when you realize the size of the hearts these bikers have.
The story of eight-year old Sienna Nadeau and her fridge magnet business proves the point. Sienna made a big bag of magnets with the Boogie Bash logo on them and pledged one third of the gross to AIM.
Sienna had planned to sell them at the Rock Creek Market where she is a regular vendor but the market didn’t attract a lot of traffic from the Boogie Bash.
Long story short, she donated her leftover Boogie Bash magnets to the Boogie Bash organizers. They turned around and sold them for her and presented her with the proceeds to add to her bucket list project of horseback riding lessons.