I’ve been sitting here in the dark—the crickets are so loud this year, it’s that dry heat we get in August—and I found myself thinking about 1971. I was twenty-two, which feels like a different species of animal entirely now that I’m seventy-eight and my knees creak like the floorboards in this old farmhouse. I had just moved out to the county, accepted a position at the middle school, and I thought I was the second coming of Horace Mann or something equally ridiculous because I’d read three books on behavioral psychology and developmental milestones. I didn't know a soul here then, just me and a stack of lesson plans that were, frankly, far too ambitious for a group of farm kids who just wanted to get home and help with the harvest... anyway, I was so AGGRESSIVELY confident back then. I sent these memos—well, they weren't emails then, it was 1971 so I typed them on my mother’s old Smith-Corona and left them in his wooden cubby in the main office—to Mr. Henderson. Arthur Henderson. He’d been the principal since the school was built, a man with hands like leather and a way of looking at you that made you feel like you were transparent. By my third day, I had decided the entire administrative structure was... let's call it suboptimal. I wrote him three pages on "The Cognitive Dissonance of Traditional Discipline" and how he was stifling the children's innate creative impulses by insisting on silent lunch. I actually told him, in writing, that his leadership style was archaic and lacked "emotional reciprocity." God, I can still see the words on the page. I thought I was being revolutionary, helping him see the light. It’s funny because I look back and I see this girl, this young woman with her hair in those tight braids, so full of herself. I was just so lonely, I think. Moving out here where the nearest neighbor is a mile away and the grocery store closes at six, you start to manufacture importance for yourself just to keep from disappearing into the cornfields. I remember sitting in my little rental cottage, drinking tea and feeling so superior while I typed those critiques. I told him he needed to implement a "peer-led restorative model" for the sixth graders who were fighting behind the bus barn. I didn't even know their names yet!