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53 Choices, 1954 Before your mother, before even my job on the Road Department, there was Betty. My brother Jack came back from Korea sans legs, as they say. Dad built him a ramp out back for the chair. We didn’t have anything back then; there was nothing. The only choices you had were to abstain or spin the wheel of biologic chance. Me and Betty spun that wheel almost every afternoon, until that Thursday after Algebra, when she told me she was late, and me, the fool, said but that was our last class, and Betty ran home, crying. I went back to the house, thought maybe I’d talk to Jack about girls and such. He had dated the Rittner twin, Homecoming Queen, ’48. I found him in the garage—Jack—his chair right next to Dad’s stepladder. It couldn’t have been long. He was swaying just a bit, as if blown by a baby’s breath, moving from a height where his toes would’ve almost scraped the concrete. ...

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