I’ve lived in Courage House for ten years, a group home in a sketchy area of New Haven that reeks of General Tso’s Chicken, bleach, and wet dog. Everyone within the walls shoots for grit in the face of anguish, but like the wilder world, we have our own slip-n-slides among us.

Take Jeb from Delaware - eye contact sends him scurrying to the closest corner, but he wouldn’t hesitate to lift your Amazon package from the mailroom cubbies if he believed it held dark chocolate. Or Levi from Corpus Christi, who’s on his eighth group home this year and is determined to sleep on Egyptian Cotton sheets, even if they’re yours.

My roommate, Herby, peppers conversations with Winston Churchill quotes. Herby was born and raised in London, and studies the BBC. “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give,” Mr. Churchill said, and if Winston uttered it, by God, so will Herby. Never mind many historians say the iconic prime minister should be painted truthfully and critically for his numerous bigoted comments he made about African Americans and other minorities during WWII. To Herby, of course, those assertions are nothing but absolute rubbish. 

The two of us have been rooming together since I first arrived, and the Churchill zealot act gets old fast. I know he adores the British legend, depends on him, really, but Churchill’s pearls of wisdom lose much of their gravitas and zing emerging from Herby’s nasal, upper-crust voice. At best, my roomie’s a depressive who loathes the term ‘bipolar.’ He’s forty and acts like a Purple Heart medal should be pinned to his lapel weekly for sticking with his dated, preferred diagnosis, manic depression. 

The first night we met, Herby put his pale arm around my beefy tin neck, saying, “Rufus McHenry, I want you to know Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill came into this world November 30, 1874 and we’re all better off. The nicknames were ‘Winnie’ and Russians called him, ‘British Bulldog’ for his ferocity.”

“Yeah?” I said.

Herby nodded; “Tomorrow at dinner I’ll be discussing the Blitz and other WWII trivia and if you win the prize there’ll be a generous scoop of chocolate gelato with strawberry Jell-O. Study up, blokes.”

No one’s perfect at Courage - anyone can tell you that. My imperfection is being morbidly obese, and I don’t feel right unless I’m running or galloping, which isn’t an easy maneuver for a big guy. El Blimpo someone called me in a Bridgeport KFC five years ago before I cried all the way home on a city bus.   

I tipped the scales at 383 pounds back then. Once you’re up that high, I’m not sure people see you as a sentient being. They register you the same they would roadkill—expendable flesh. I’m not the world heaviest now, but still, fat is fat is fat. I know running several miles daily is tough on my joints, but it’s worth the endorphin rush, no matter how fleeting. I ice my knees for twenty minutes after, wilting as the emotive lift fades, but it’s all I have going for me right now.

“This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure,” Herby pronounced each dawn. At first, Herby informed shrinks in New Haven his Churchill tic was a Tourette-like spasm, and while that was untrue, the legendary Prime Minister does help Herby connect with folks and be braver. It’s harmless, I know, but he gets the knives out with me and says, “I’m thrilled with your quest towards easing your disturbed psyche, Rufus, but WTF’s the deal with the shiny crap on your noggin?”