It’s May 25th.

George Floyd walks into a convenience store. George Floyd pays for a pack of cigarettes with a 20. George Floyd walks out of the convenience store. He sits in his car with a friend. Maybe lights one up. Maybe just talks.

The store clerks come to his car. They tell him the 20 was fake.

The cops show up. Cop on the driver’s side pulls his gun. Cop on the driver’s side reholsters his gun. More cops show up.

George Floyd is dragged out of the driver’s side. He looks heavy. Clumsy. He is walked to the cop car and packed into the backseat. He is claustrophobic.

George Floyd falls out the other side of the cop car. His head hits the ground first. He is handcuffed. He cannot get up. The officers surround him. Things get lost. Things get hazy. Things get wrong.

Derek Chauvin casually holds his knee and whole body against George Floyd’s neck. His hand is in his pocket. He taunts George Floyd.

Get in the car.

I can’t.

Minute 1.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 2.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 3.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 4.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 5.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 6.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 7.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 8.

I. Can’t. Breathe.

Standers-by are held in place by Tou Thau, who stands in front of the scene like a dog guarding its food. Still, they yell, they plead, they record the whole thing.

Check his pulse!

The ambulance arrives. EMTs quickly load George Floyd into the back of the vehicle. A firetruck arrives to offer extra support, but cannot find the ambulance.

George Floyd is gone.

Minneapolis is on fire. Outrage and sadness fill the streets and surge through the arteries of the mainstream media until the heart of our country finally explodes, bleeds and bleeds with centuries of the honest-to-God wrongs our fathers and forefathers taught us to justify.

We are bleeding and it hurts and it’s what we need.

We treat America’s history like it’s not ours anymore. Like it is something we used to have but gave up a long time ago. These past few days, we have been reminded of who we really are because of where we truly came from.

Greed. Oppression. Racism.

Protests are happening everywhere. Some stay peaceful and some turn violent. It takes mutation and mistakes to evolve, and that can be painful sometimes. Our Instagram-filtered vision has been ripped cleanly from our eyes.

There are rumors that white supremecists are organizing some of the protests. People are leaving their homes. Fathers are sitting by their doors, guns loaded.

It is so hard to un-ignore the parts of our past that make us feel bad. Don’t we know that doing so is the only way to change?

It’s June 3rd.

I sit with a ball of tears in the back of my throat. I feel ignorant and I feel scared. How does this all feel surprising and not surprising at the same time?

I think about my Black friends, and how their lives were probably a lot different than mine. I think about their fear. Their pain. Their unchosen acceptance of the constant discrimination. Born into a blind world that pretends its eyes are wide open.

Unfair. Unjust. Unsettling.

The sheer fabric of the country is collapsing in on itself. It is unraveling and a new story is being woven – a story that is knotted with the darkest threads of our past and dyed with the blood of the oppressed. A true story.

George Floyd walks into a convenience store and changes the world.