Atticus   

It’s 7:30 a.m., and I’m sitting on my couch in my underwear, eating a bowl of cereal and reading about the election on my laptop before leaving for work.

Until I’m interrupted by someone knocking on my door. At 7:30 a.m. on a Wednesday.

From where I am in the living room, I can see that the person at my door is black and stands about 5’7” or 5’8”. But I can’t tell whether it’s a man or a woman.

He or she most likely can clearly see me. I have one of those standard doors from The Home Depot with the large rectangular etched glass window in the top third to half.

I did a mental shoulder shrug. If you’re knocking on someone’s door at this hour during the work week, then, yeah, you deserve to see a strange white man appear at the door in nothing but his skivvies.

So I put down the cereal bowl, get up and walk to the door. And I crack it open just enough to see and speak.

It’s a woman, and she has a 3 or 4-year-old boy, also black, at her side.

“Yep?” I ask.

“Is this your child?” she asks me.

Only in Atlanta.