"What are you?"

During a day of mid 30 degree, sweltering, sweaty, busy and extremely long day at work I encountered a man who surprisingly make me couragous today. 

He was a very large, tall, mid-30's, Caucasian man with brown leather sandals, pale shorts and a basic blue shirt. He began to approach me as I waited to greet him, like I do to all the other guests at Mission Hill. I greeted him with the traditional, "Hello!" and welcoming smile. He replied with a swift and hurried, "Hello" back. I asked, "How are you?" He replied, "Good" and paused then continued in a confident manner, 

"What are you?" 

Excuse me sir??? Did you really just start a conversation with me asking me not, "what is your heritage?" or another semi-polite question such as, "what is your background?" but with a tactless, "what are you?" as if I'm wearing an indistinguishable Halloween costume.  

I replied with a quick, "What are YOU?" with a raised eyebrow.

The day had been so long and tiring that I replied with a swift and sassy answer. I held my breath because I had never replied to that question with such a bold response before. Would he get offended and say that was none of my business? Then would he understand how imposing and frank that question was right at the beginning of our conversation?

To my surprise, he took it well! He started telling me that his background is Canadian, Italian and French. Then I made a joke and he laughed and continued to walk into the winery. I let go of the anxious breath I had been holding and chuckled a little bit at how nervous I had been to reply to such a question with such a forward response. Sometimes i'm too nice even when people ask me things that make me uncomfortable. Today made me realize that I should make boundaries for what I'm comfortable answering and that if I don't want to answer, I don't need to. And most importantly, to just be my sassy and courageous self.