So it goes.

Kurt.

These words and the ones that followed meant a lot to me. They highlighted the difference between “equal” and “the same” by showing what it meant to conflate them.

Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut, for giving me these words.

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

[Edit: It’s a little sad, losing RAW and Kurt Vonnegut in such rapid succession. They helped me form a lot of who I am and make up a good bit of my formative thought in my teenage years.]

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