Benjamin Rubenstein's Storytells Benjamin Rubenstein

I made believe I was an investigative journalist to uncover why I feel the Black Lives Matter symbol has come to mean something other than what it used to represent. What I discovered led me to want the Black Lives Matter sign removed at my apartment building.

Covid-19 had begun spreading in the U.S. Leaders of organizations were scurrying to get their computer-based staff able to telework indefinitely. This is about one of those thrilling times in a desk job when I did something that may have really mattered.

In March 2020, many public places around the U.S. closed to protect vulnerable people from catching Covid-19. Despite the pandemic, less vulnerable young adults cavorted around. They seemed either not to accept or care about their new labels as selfish, cold-hearted, and harbingers of death. However...what if the tables were turned on who the vulnerable really were? In this fictional story about the new Twenties/Thirties Respiratory Syndrome pandemic, the geezers can't stop cavorting around town and acting as harbingers of death for the youth.

I wrote this story and performed it for my girlfriend on "Valenday," which is one of many shortened words in Anie's lexicon I've adored and adopted, and they've now became a new language for us. Before Anie, I’d basically never had a girlfriend before. I’d always attributed that to me being unwanted because of my past diseases and their resulting effects. Who would want me? Nobody, and I accepted that and that was ok. And then Anie arrived, as did "din" consisting of steak and "brocc" and many other new words.