A Man Called Brenda

In a follow up to yesterday’s post about the hot dogs without hot dogs, I wanted to mention our encounter at Sheetz with “Brenda”.

 

While my daughter Randie waited for the hot dogs to be removed from my hot dogs, we were engaged in conversation by a young African American man. We didn’t catch his name but he had a set of keys attached to a strap with the name Brenda on it. Based on what he was sharing with us, Randie and I surmised Brenda might be his mother’s name. For purposes of this narrative, we’re going to call him Brenda.

 

What prompted Brenda to engage in conversation was my shirt. I opted to wear my dark blue Duke polo and it turns out Brenda is a Duke fan. Like me, Brenda is a Duke fan surrounded by Carolina fans. Anyway, he liked my shirt and asked where I got it. I mentioned I bought it at Dick’s Sporting Goods. Turns out Brenda didn’t have a good experience there once. He was accused by a store employee of stealing something from the store while Brenda was walking INTO the store.

Now I’m not sure how someone can be accused of stealing something from a store you’re walking into. It struck Randie and I as just straight up racist but Brenda just rolled with it. It’s not the first or last stupid racist thing that happened to him.

Brenda shared with us the story of his relationship with this mother. By his own admission, he was not the best son to her and made her life hell. Through it all, though, she was tough but fair, never giving up on him. As he’s gotten older, he wants more and more to not disappoint her anymore. He wants to finish school, start his own business and be the good man his mother wants him to be. 

 I’m not sure why Brenda was sharing all this with us. He never once followed up his tale of woe with a request for a few bucks. He just wanted to talk to someone and we were there. 

In Randie, he was lucky and found a good and attentive listener. In me, not so much. It was not an environment conducive to me, machinery humming and beeping in the background, other people talking, echoes.




I hope Brenda can keep the faith, that his mother’s hopes for him are not unfounded and he can be the good man he’s looking to be.