With the happenings in NFL football recently, and notably today with Peyton Manning’s officially joining the Denver Broncos, I thought about Aurora, the protagonist in Light Fixtures, who lives in the football-is-everything South.
As a Louisianian, Aurora is certainly a football lover, and though the New Orleans Saints wouldn’t be founded until four years later in 1967, when she’d be a senior in high school, she still thinks about the game. No more so than when an upper classmen from her high school–Johnny Lee–, who plays wide receiver on the school’s team, comes to help her granddaddy and her with summer hay baling. After an afternoon of sweaty work, he drives away in his pickup but not before he pops his head out the window to tease Aurora. Triggered by Johnny Lee’s teasing, she tries to chase after him on foot. She goes nearly half a mile before she finally stops, though she felt like she could run forever. Was his joking a trigger for Aurora’s teen bipolar disorder mania?
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