The Songbook of Benny Lament

by Amy Harmon

The weight of people’s confidence is a heavy burden.

“Because if you don’t have money, it affects everything else. It’ll drive a man into the ground if he can’t take care of his own. That’s what men were put on earth to do. Protect. Provide.

that men are put on earth to protect and provide. If a man can’t protect and provide it’ll make him mean . . . or it’ll drive him crazy.

“She said if you want people to change, you have to show them what it looks like.”

Because people are people. Life is messy and hard. And change is slow.”

Everyone was a child at Christmas, a whiny, sad child with unmet expectations and a longing for past Christmases and people that we’d failed to appreciate at the time.

“None of us can help who we are. We are born into the world we are born into. The family. The skin. Nobody gets to choose those things. You can’t be mad at a man for who he is. Only what he is . . . and the choices he makes.”