Luc Perreault looks just like a typical biker. He goes everywhere in a leather jacket littered with patches and badges, he shows off the ink he had injected into his skin, and he drinks as much beer as his belly can hold (unless he has to ride his hog that day). He even understands why people might think he looks like the typical dirty biker who is prepared to “eat your soul if you stare at me wrong.”
But looks can be deceiving. Although he may appear to be a killer, he’s really just a gentle, softie under it all. The story you’re about to read comes from a life-changing moment for Perreault while he was riding his mom’s motorcycle in July 2013.
Since the test drive was more strenuous than he had expected, he pulled into the parking lot of Canada’s most popular coffee shop chain, Tim Horton’s. Like most bikers, when they’re not in their native habitat, he stood out like a sore thumb. This was why a curious little girl and her mother would not stop staring in his direction and whispering about him behind his back.
However, the little girl did something that Luc never expected. She looked at him, seeing through the armor of his big bad biker persona, and greeted him with a smile.
“Hello,” he replied, returning the smile to the little girl.
Then the girl’s mother intervened to protect the innocence of her daughter. She grabbed the girl and yanked her away from Luc Perreault.
“We don’t talk to dirty bikers,” she said as she ran away with her daughter in tow.
While you might think that a tough, dirty biker like Luc would let this insult roll off his back, it pained him to no end. For days, the mother’s words tormented him until he finally decided to peel back his mask of toughness and put his bleeding heart on Facebook in the form of an open letter to the mother of the little girl.
“To the family in the red SUV at Tim Horton’s today,” he wrote. “Yes I am a big 280-pound guy with motorcycles and full of tattoos. I am a welder, I am loud, I drink beer, I swear, and I look like I would eat your soul if you stare at me wrong. What you don’t know is that I have been happily married for 11 years, my kids call me daddy, I am a college graduate.
“My mother is proud of me and tells everyone how lucky she is to have such a wonderful son. My nieces and nephews are always happy to see there m’ noncl Luc. When my daughter broke her arm, I cried more than she did.”
“I read books, I help people,” he wrote. “I go out of my way to thank war veterans, and I even cried at Armageddon.”
He concluded his viral post: “Remember that even though you hurt my feelings, this ‘dirty biker’ would be the first person to run into your burning house to save your little girl’s goldfish so she wouldn’t be sad!”
Have you ever judged someone before you got to know them?
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