A couple of years ago a college classmate told him that their noble old fraternity had been suspended by the college president. A black female student claimed that racial slurs had been shouted at her from an open window. The fraternity was able to show that all the windows had been painted shut for years, probably dating back to when the house was air conditioned. But the college president wasn't going to dispute a black female's word on the basis of evidence. It could mean protests, charges of racism, broken windows, newspaper and trustee inquiries. Bad PR for the college. It was safer to hand the fraternity a bit of injustice.
Recently, he had arrived at the supermarket in a cloudburst. There were a dozen parking spaces by the entrance, but they were marked "Handicapped Parking $500 Fine." He remembered when the handicapped said that they wanted to be treated like everyone else. Now they had privileges. He wondered about those signs. Did they give offense? "Handicapped" was one of those discarded words. They hadn't got around to replacing the signs.
He remembered, too, when males did not use four-letter words in front of parents or females. Now the young womyn could out-cuss his male generation.
More memories. If you scraped a car while street parking, you were expected to leave a note with name and telephone number and expect to pay for the repair. He had once told some young people this and they laughed at the joke.
Something had happened. He had been brought up to be a citizen in a world that no longer existed.
At least there still were gardens. He put away his thoughts and went to get his knife.
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