Straight Man

by Reg Green

     “Stand up straight, boy,” my mother used to say, though I didn’t take it in, always having something more important to think about.

“You’ll be bent over like a question mark when you’re old,” a friend, Michael Jennings, who was straight as a ramrod, often told me.  And I am.

But Michael died in his fifties. Worrying too much about his posture, I’ve always thought.