Some of my friends and I were having a great time at our little party. We were sucking down some beer a long with some munchies. Everything was going fine as if nothing could ever go wrong. It was perfect. Jim and Lou had a small quarrel but we calmed them down and resolved the problem. Afterwards, we laughed at the cause. Later in the night everyone started to leave.

The next day we all went back to the place we usually hung out. Everybody was talking about how we felt and that we should do it again sometime. Then all of a sudden Andrew came in blabbering to us about what happened last night, but we couldn't understand him because he was talking too fast. We all told him to slow down, then he continued, saying that he got robbed and almost killed for driving too slow. We all quieted down, then we asked him if he was serious and to describe the whole incident to us.

He said as he was going back to his apartment he stopped his car at a turn and he was held at gun point and robbed by a "that kind of person.'' When Jerome heard the term he used, he asked Andrew what "that kind of person" was? "I bet you were going to say Nigger too," he added. Andrew became defensive and denied it. But Jerome felt insulted and became angry and asked him what he would call him. Andrew was speechless and said only, "a friend." Jerome said that was a lie and that he would call him just another nigger. Then he walked out. Andrew told the rest of us that he never intended to call that black person a nigger, and we believed him because he had been our friend long enough to where we knew he wouldn't have done such a thing.

The next day my friends and I tried to resolve the problem. When Jerome came over we told him that Andrew didn't intend to say "nigger." We told him that he would never say anything that would offend his food friend, Jerome. He did not want to have an everlasting conflict with one of his friends. We told him that it was not Andrew to make racist comments, and finally we convinced him to believe us.

The next day Jerome and Andrew made up, and we were so glad we made an oath never to do anything that would put our friendship on the line.

Matthew Shorty