'A Black Boy with a slingshot'

I was sitting at Burger King one Sunday morning with my Sicilian octogenarian friends when Chuck Tingley's mural on the teen center was almost complete. I asked one friend, with a prominent, recognizable last name what he thought of the new art across the street. 

He had just finished telling me about how hard it is to keep 56 different pills straight four times a day in order to stay alive. 

His face turned beet red. He pound the table with his fist. His voice rose. 

"You call that art? How can you call that art? It doesn't even have a Madonna on it. You call that art? I look at that and you know what I see? A black boy with a slingshot. And look what is in the slingshot. A rainbow. He might be gay." 

Norman Lear could not have written an Archie Bunker scene any better. One day, the voices of guys like him ranting about things like that will be gone but Tingley's art will still be here to inspire us.