When my mother was young, she was rich / So rich that her father bought her a coat / Straight from a well known department store / At ten after closing time by knocking on the window / And shaking a hand full of money at the manager. / It was a prepossessing coat. / Georgia clay red with a furry collar. / When my mother got a little older, her family was poor / And her mother and her had to share a coat. One had to wait for / the / other to come in, order to go out.It was a hideous coat. / […]

My story describes a horrifying threat of violence I experienced at the age of nineteen, many decades ago. I recount the seemingly safe context in which it occurred, how I responded to the threat as it was unfolding and how profoundly the experience impacted on my character development. An important dimension of the story is how my need to be popular and offend no-one at the time led me to ignore my sense of impending danger. […]

To get to your apartment junior year of college, you have to walk a winding path by your old freshman dorm, three newer apartments, and the community center before you arrive at home. Sometimes instead, you take a shorter path through the woods, like when it was below 40 degrees or you were running late to whatever class or club you’d committed to. On this particular night, you wrap your jacket tightly around yourself and opt for the shorter, if poorly lit, path. […]