“Which way did he go, George?” is, indeed, a reference to “Of Mice and Men.” And lest we forget how the good, simple-minded Lennie ends up, let me remind you. He kills Curley’s wife by accident — I guess I don’t know my own strength — and George has to shoot him in the back of the head so Lennie isn’t set upon by a lynch mob.

I don’t know what any of that has to do with anything other than I feel like we normal folk out here are just a bunch of Lennies, with our only options being a bullet or the noose.