Thanks so much for taking the time to get in touch with me about my story, “A Turn for the Worse.” I really appreciate your thoughts and am glad you cared enough about the upset man to contact me.

I intended the story to be about hypocrisy. Kent looked to everyone else to take care of the man, and he judged them very harshly for failing to do so. In fact, he was so discouraged with his fellow patrons that he couldn’t bring himself to remain in the coffeehouse another minute.

Of course, the irony is that at no point did he consider helping the man himself. I feel that we are all guilty of looking to others to take care of a situation before we look to ourselves. We even admonish others for failing to do that which we are unwilling to do.

As for the sobbing man, the idea was to keep him vague enough that most of us could probably picture someone from our own lives in his spot, thus making him more sympathetic to the reader and strengthening the impact of Kent’s hypocrisy.

I hope that cleared some things up! Once again, I really thank you for reading my work and I hope you’ll continue to keep up with my stories in News and Views!

~Scott