This one
(mixed race) bartender at the student bar and I were talking the other week –
he was hanging out there either after shift or on his off day – and somehow we
began talking about slurs, and then segued into memories of youth.
When he
was a kid, he was in Catholic school in a rust belt city in Ohio, and his
father had this weird disease that his family just found out about and were
grappling with.
He was
still trying to figure out how to tell his friends, but that day at school, at
the end of announcements, they mentioned his family as part of prayer
intentions for the week.
He
hadn’t said anything and neither had his family, but someone had heard and just
put them on there, and suddenly everyone knew and everyone in the school all got told without his
permission being asked at all.
He just
shot up out of his desk and ran out of the classroom and down the hall off of
the schoolgrounds, and after a teacher got in a car and finally caught up to him, they
said he ran like a mile-and-half full sprint, and he told me he was dodging
down alleys and everything, just trying to get away where no-one could find
him, though he says in retrospect that it probably was less than a
mile-and-a-half that he ran.
He never
got in trouble for that, and his dad turned out to be fine.
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