Good Advice

by Richard E. Dansky

“You got beaten up a lot as a kid, didn’t you?”

That’s what Jerry Brower asked me, and the entire Central Carolina Writers’ Workshop burst into nervous laughter.

I looked up from the short sketch I’d been reading from and turned to face my questioner. Jerry Brower sat at the end of the table, down past a gauntlet of laughing faces. He, at least, wasn’t laughing, and for that I was silently, desperately grateful. I nodded to him, slowly.

He nodded back. The laughter stopped.