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Comfortable
A Story Told in 555 Words
Growing up, he had always been drawn to girls with rough lives. Presently, he is still drawn to women with rough lives. A friend recently told him, “We all have our messes, you know?” That was a centering moment for him of how everyone in some ways has a rough life.
Every Saturday when he was a teenager, he and his church friends would have to install a window air conditioning unit three stories up in the education wing of their church for one of the Sunday School classes of the older generation. Come Sunday night, after church was well enough over, they would then have to uninstall the same window unit so it would not be an eyesore for the church during the week. One of his friends, during the holiday season in 1988, had become frustrated with this back and forth. His friend screamed, “Forget this Dixie Christmas union, yo!” No one knew exactly what he meant, his friend admitted he did not know, either, but it was funny at the time, and they always referred to that moment over the years as FTDCUY, or more simply, “the outburst”.
This was in rural North Georgia. There were trailers scattered across the county and plenty of families were poor, White and Black, but no one much talked about the economic disparities, unless a family was really poor, but the kids all went to the same school and school was an even playing field for differing…
