"There Once Lived a Man"

                                    There Once Lived a Man   by N.M. Morgulis

            There once lived a man who had some strange behaviors.  He feared what he didn’t understand and hated anything he had never seen before. He knew this to be true, so he kept it in his heart, and only spoke of it to his family. He knew how he felt, but he also knew the world was a callous place, where people could be crucified for what they said. So he kept his hatred inside. All day he would look around him and count the things that he hated. He also counted what he feared, but to him it wasn’t fear. He thought that was also hatred. Because hatred is a conscious decision and fear is not, he chose to believe that he was not a fearful man. And so he went about his life counting the things he hated. He filed them away until he got home. When he was safe inside the four walls of his calm predictable home, he told his son and wife about all the things he saw that day that he hated. The son kept listening and listening.  And he listened everyday for the whole time he went to school. It seemed to become a regular routine for the Father and Son. But the boy didn’t realize he was talking about fear, but he never called it that, so the boy never knew.  Soon the boy also started listing the things he hated. Because a man wasn’t a self-sufficient man,  until he drew a hard line in the dirt and figured out what he was going to be hating. So the son got a job and a wife that hated the same things. He would come home and tell his son about all the things he saw that day that he hated.