Oh boy. Just… *ugh*. Another round. You know, you spend your whole life thinking you’re doing the right thing, planting seeds, whatever cliché you want to throw in there, and then you’re 60 and sitting in a dark school parking lot, staring at the little glowing lights on your dashboard like they hold all the answers. They don’t. Surprise. Just finished conferences. Back-to-back since three o’clock. My voice is gone. Not really, but I wish it was, then I’d have an excuse. The last one was the Miller kid’s parents. Cute kid, really, sweet, a little quiet, but he tries so hard. His mom, though. Oh, his mom. She cornered me after, in the hallway, everyone else leaving, and just… she *thanked* me. For everything, she said. For seeing him, for making him feel smart. And I just stood there, nodding, smiling, feeling like a total fraud, like a… a con artist almost. Because I know. I know what I did. What I *didn’t* do. It’s been a long day, a long week, a long *life* sometimes it feels like. You get to this point, you see the end of the road, and all you can think about are the turns you didn’t take. Or the turns you *did* take, and maybe shouldn’t have. In a town this size, everyone knows everything, eventually. And I’m not talking about some big secret, some dramatic affair or embezzlement. No, nothing that exciting. Just… small choices. Little compromises. Like with Jimmy. Jimmy Jenkins, been in my class for three years now, I’ve had all his older brothers and sisters too, their dad and I played baseball together way back when. Jimmy is… Jimmy’s a handful. Not bad, just… energy. SO much energy. And his parents, bless their hearts, they just don’t know what to do with him. So during his conference, I told them, again, how he’s doing great, making friends, learning to sit still, etcetera, etcetera. All the usual teacher talk. And his dad, he just looked so relieved. You could see it. Like a weight lifted. Because everyone else, every other teacher in this school, they’ve written Jimmy off. Said he’s impossible. And I just… I couldn’t bring myself to tell them the truth. That he still pushes other kids. That he spent half of science class trying to sneak out the back door. That he drew on the wall in the bathroom with a permanent marker this morning. Because then what? They’d be crushed. And I’m tired. Too tired to have that hard conversation. Too tired to try and explain that sometimes, even good kids just… need more than you can give. And now I’m sitting here, practically laughing at myself, because what kind of legacy is *that*? The one who kept quiet. The one who let things slide. The one who just wanted to go home and eat leftover casserole. Oh, lord. It’s almost funny. Almost.