Unprepared by Jerald Walker (2011)

Although many stories have creative hooks Unprepared’s is very unique.  It starts off with the author, Dr. Jerald Walker head of Emerson’s Writing, Literature and Publishing Department, recounting a memory from his childhood in Chicago’s South Side in the early ‘80s.  This memory is of a ride he took from a man when he was young, where the man offered him money in exchange for a sexual favor.  From the beginning Walker shows that this story is not for a young audience.  With its explicit language and use of a mature topic it’s plain to see that it’s directed towards an audience that is mature enough to see it as simply a method to convey a larger message.  From there he jumps to a topic that seems almost entirely different, the topic of murders.  He uses the fact that he thought that he was safe just as another boy in Atlanta may have thought the same thing, but was mistaken.  He then explained how it was among other serial murders and that the biggest surprise about them were that a man of African American decent had committed them.  He explains how there was backlash because there was no way that the man killing many young African American boys could be black, and that the murderer must have been some crazy, white Klu Klux Klan member.  He also says that not only is there no way a black man is doing this to other blacks but that this is simply not a thing that black people do.  He then comes back full circle to the fact that he was in the car with the man but he refused the money and he refused to give the sexual favor, and this was confusing because it seemed as if it strayed from his driving point.  Before, it seemed as if he was trying to state that unexpected and quite possibly negative events might occur.  His full circle ending on the other hand contradicted his point but he still left the idea that you may be unprepared for things that are unexpected.

Unexpected Preparation
http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_jun2012/UnexpectedPreparation.jpg