The color red has been my favorite for a long time. I’m drawn to it like a moth is to a flame. When asked to select a color in kindergarten, I always chose this shade. Most of the time, this boy always wanted whatever I had. And when we were expected to trade, I looked for someone who had it so I could keep it.

This was well before speed dating and swiping past profiles. And Tinder.

I would always look for someone else to exchange with, and he would follow me. Not quietly but relentlessly, making it apparent that he wanted my attention more than my Crayola. The day that the teacher saw me ignoring him and made me publicly make the trade was the last day I avoided him.

I felt like she spotlighted me, and everyone was looking at us. I quickly handed over what he wanted and tried to pretend he wasn’t there.

But whenever we switched to another color, he was right there, waiting for me to give mine to him.

It killed me to use blue, green, or whatever choice he took without thinking. There was no alliance between him and what he randomly grabbed from the box.

Mine was my Ruby birth color, and I knew it was significant even at age five. It was the last stone on my mom’s Mother’s ring that housed five others. I found out later they had to break the ring and make room for mine on the end.

Of course, they did.

Anytime I pick a game piece or am required to create a character if I can get red or an equivalent of it, I try to. When with people who also seem to have this affinity and take it before I can claim it, a part of me dies inside. It’s the kid from kindergarten rearing his ugly head. But, I never say. I go with yellow or some other meaningless option.

I have found you can be defeated whether you play with your favorite color or not. The only consolation is that you at least had that in your possession at the start space.

It’s not surprising to me now that I have a neighbor named Red who drives a red truck.

I have lived in my house for thirty-one years, and my front window faces a busy street where I have seen kids catch busses for school and the same ones graduate and go to college. You don’t realize who is around you until they aren’t anymore.

A few months ago, my daughter and I noticed that this man and his wife were no longer buzzing by every morning at 9 am. Even when I wasn’t working from home, I would see them go by. Stop sign and a left turn.

Suddenly, it wasn’t happening anymore.

“I think you are supposed to help him with hospice for his wife,” she said one day, as she does, and it goes through me like electricity.

That would have been great, but I didn’t know him. I had waved and acknowledged his existence all the years I have lived in my house. I watched a while ago as she started to show signs of having a stroke.

One arm hung down at her side, and he did all the yard work alone. But, every day, they drove past my house.

“I bet they go get coffee,” I said to my daughter. We would often try to guess where they were off to.

So when she said I was to help him, I started paying more attention. The lights were on, but no one was home. He was coming home later at night and started going on walks with a large wooden staff like Moses.

“You have to help them,” she said. As I looked out the window, I watched him in a very slow and sad saunter up the street.

Then I flashed back mentally to 2020—the political yard signs. I saw them and gave them little thought. I had decided to disassociate myself from it. Does it exist in heaven? Then I don’t want anything to do with it.

I know I always get the speech that if I don’t vote, bad, bad things will happen. The horror of horrors! You don’t vote? Your one vote is needed. You are why, Chris, this country is going to the dogs.

To each, their own, and mine is to stay out of the fray.

I listened to comments from those supporting the “opposing” side when they noticed the signs proudly displayed.

“They support them? They are so brainwashed and delusional!”

And I have heard the other side say the same thing.

One day recently, I saw him outside. I ran out the front door and across the street before he could disappear.

I introduced myself, and he said his name was Red. My daughter and I were right in our assessment of him being alone. I found out that his wife is in a care facility near his home. I offered to help him in any way I could, including taking things for donation as he was getting ready to sell the house in the future.

I told him I volunteered for hospice and to let me know if it ever came to that.

He came to my door the other night wanting the hospice’s name. It’s now been determined this is where the situation is.

I gave him the information, and I saw his sadness. There’s no running away from it, and he’s in the most challenging part of the walk.

My daughter’s words were true when I had no idea what was happening.

He came back to get my full name, but I wasn’t home. I caught him the next day in his yard. He was removing plants so the siding could be redone.

I followed him into his house so I could write my name on a sheet of paper. On the way in, I saw it.

In the garage, at least 20 bright red with white lettering I Voted stickers were hanging on a cabinet showing his former treks to the voting booth.

I scribbled my name on a sheet of paper and looked at the surroundings of very feminine collectibles. Even though she was absent, her presence was everywhere I looked.

He told me he and his daughter would start going through belongings to give away.

He pointed to many of the items surrounding us and said,

“She could tell you where she got each one.”

As was the case with me, going through a divorce, I had to get rid of material things. But, I always found someone who needed it.

“When you give these things away, you will feel the gratitude of those who need what you give them. The people who get these things will treat them like she did.”

I said goodbye, and he went back to his work.

Had I let politics come between us, I would not have been able to extend myself to him this way. While many sit in front of their TVs or read the latest headline on their phone regarding where we are as a society and how far we think we have come, I find we haven’t advanced all that much.

Many old ways of doing things, like taking care of your neighbor, have fallen to the wayside because of a piece of paper where you make choices about who will run for an office we are so removed from. Yet, people near us, next to us, need our help.

While the world screams one way, God whispers another. And God’s way won’t leave you seeing red.