Coming of Age Ceremony (For Berkeley)

Waaaaaaaaaay back on March 19th (2023), we had a Coming of Age Ceremony for Berkeley.

Robyn for the longest time has looked longingly at the Jewish traditions of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. And in general has had a strong sense that she wanted to honor our children's transition from children to adolescents. Having no such traditions to appeal to in our family heritages we had to look else where. But we had to look else where with an eye toward not appropriating other people's traditional ceremonies.

After much internet querying, and ruling out having Berkeley kill a lion with her bearbare hands, Andrea Manning entered our lives. As I'm sure no one who has been on the internet in the last ten years will be surprised by, we rediscovered you can find pretty much anything there, even a person who specializes in creating coming of age ceremonies with out appropriating other cultures. 

We spent multiple months meeting with Andrea, coming up with ideas, scratching ideas, asking favors of many of our friends, second guessing our ideas, feeling like we didn't know what we were doing because we were kind of making up a holiday for ourselves, crafting, gaining a mentor, feeling altogether overwhelmed with last minute planning, and eliciting Berkeley's tepid cooperation.

Why would her cooperation be tepid you wonder? Well, one of our main motivations for the celebrations was that our kids never do anything hard in comparison to a lot of other people in the world. They have it pretty nice. At a high level the celebration would start with speaking of Berkeley's strengths, then a separation that included her doing something challenging, and then her return where we would acknowledge her as a transformed person, but not just her, but the entire family. As she changes to adolescents so must our parenting, and so must her interactions with her sisters. And her community. But the important part was that hard bit in the middle. We settled on her walking the full length of Golden Gate Park and back on her own, approximately six miles. She was not excited for this.

We mapped out the route, we practiced small parts of it, I walked the entire thing with her one day, her and Robyn road bikes along the entire route another day. But it's a lot of walking and she hates going out and doing things alone. Which is exactly why we chose this task over others. 

As an aside, she accused me of never doing hard things myself one day, when I had asked her to go pick up some milk from the corner store. I disagreed and told her I do hard things all the time. "Like what?" she inquired. "Like go to the grocery store to get milk." It was funny, I thought, but she rolled her eyes and didn't buy it, and to be fair she had a point. So to stretch myself a little as well, I volunteered to do something hard before she did her quest. I went to an open mic and read a poem on wrote for valentine's day. I made her come with me so she could see how terrified I was. I think still she felt it was a bigger torture for her than me to have to come along.

Back to the ceremony. I preparation we thought about and listed Berkeley's strengths. Andrea asked us to watch her and real see her. It was a fun task. With those strengths we created a driftwood windchime from the wood scavenged from the beach and dunes she has spent her childhood playing in just down the street. We painted each strength into a separate piece of wood.

We also looked at our own family values, again naming them and thinking upon them and how they might shape our ceremony.

We asked our dear friend Maliya to be a mentor for Berkeley. As part of that mentorship they got together once a week and explored the park, made healing salves, identified plants, painted rocks to represent our family values and hopefully generally bonded. The mentorship was not only a chance for her to grow, and for us to grow closer to Maliya, but represented the fact that we, as her parents, are not the only grownups she can look to for help, advice, and love. In some ways Maliya was a symbolic stand in for all the adults in her life. Later Maliya also agreed to be our master of ceremony. The event could not have happened without her.

Berkeley also, on her own, animated a cute video that matched the family value rocks. Hopefully I can figure out how to get it from the ipad to this blog post. 

We came up with a parent ceremony for the day as well. We sent out thousands of emails to friends and family on coordinating. We picked a choice spot in the park to mark the start and end of her hike and to contain our celebration. It came complete with an archway for her to passthrough and everything. AND we didn't find a single needle in the process. 

Preparing for the ceremony stretched and strengthened Robyn's and my relationship as we navigated the main friction in our relationship: she's a perfectionist and I'm a good enough-ist. 

We watched the weather with anxiety as the day approached because we had picked the date months before and didn't think at the time that we would be in the middle of a year were it seemed like half of the trees in San Francisco fell down due to so much rain. Every day the odds of rain grew more and more. We thought about calling the whole thing off the night before, but we did not.

The morning of it drizzled. We packed all of our ceremony stuff up into the car and headed into the park. The rain offered a nice ambiance and was not too heavy and by time Berkeley headed off on her hike she did so without rain accompanying her. 

A few friends showed up early to help us set up. Then a few more showed up for the first part of the ceremony. We started with a land acknowledgement and recognized that no ceremony like this, because it's very conception is steeped in native history, could be fully achieved without some nod to a past that is not fully ours. Everyone there offered a word about what the park represented to them. It's a list we could not capture but was full as inspiration from "childhood" and "freedom" to "serenity" and "appreciation". Robyn and I then presented why we were doing this (already covered above). 

Maliya addressed the importance of community, especially in the wake of COVID. While the ceremony was for our family, Maliya's words were inspired and suggested that we all, our community needed this as well, that we need more opportunities to come together in such moments after spending so much time secluded since 2020. And we acknowledge those in our community who could not be there, either due to death or distance.

We spoke of the mentorship and the bond that has grown between Berkely and Maliya. We spoke of our family values so that Berkeley might remember them on her journey away from us. Our other good friend Liesel offered a visualization/meditation of a childhood transition.

And finally we covered Berkeley's strengths. Listing them one by one and speaking to how they manifest in her, again so that she might remember them on her time away. So that she might know that she is capable and that we see her. Then we packed her bag full of love in the form of a letter from us, food, warm clothes, a tracking app, something to read, and she was off on her journey alone for the next 2 hours.

Robyn and I then snuck off to our parent ceremony, where we spoke of our strengths and challenges, remembrances and anticipations. And ate a bit of chocolate.

During that time the remainder of community showed up. We chatted, hugged, and awaited Berkeley's return. Kids ran wild. Streamers and wands were made. And as the minute approached, we lined ourselves up along your return route. The idea was to let her return to us and pause under the archway, but her friends could not be contained and they mopped her well before the appointed spot. It was quite lovely, even if against plan. We also played a little ditty over a speaker as she returned, something we chose special for her: Wildflowers by Trampled by Turtles (yes, we know it's not the original but it's the one she loves). 

After everyone had their turn to congratulate her and hug her we again gathered the larger group together and talked a little bit about what we had done in the morning. Jason shared a wonderful true story about his own childhood transition that happened around Berkeley's age when I moved away from Indianapolis. He spoke of how hard that transition was, but also the fruits that it bore in the end, fruits such as Robyn and my marriage, and the eventual birth of the child we all were celebrating that day. 

As a last step we presented Berkeley with a new privilege and responsibility. We gave her the responsibility to get herself around the neighborhood by herself and the privilege to do so on our newish e-bike. We also presented her with a key to our house as a simple of both the freedom to move about and as a sign of our trusting her with our safety.

We thanked Maliya and then it was on to eating! And eventually cleaning up and going home. 

If there is anything worth reproducing here it's Berkeley's list of strengths.

• Patient

• with animals

• with her sisters {most of the time 🙂} Sometimes I hear her listening to her sisters in a way that I think is kinda rare for kids her age

• with her parents.
  
  

• Artistic

• especially with drawing and animating. If you've spent more than 20 minutes with her, she's probably drawn a dragon on some piece of your property.
  
  

• Creative

• when role playing with Lucette

• using her imagination when coming up with games with friends- Pubic Store with Bird!

• crazy ideas when playing D&D
  
  

• Curious

• She finds so many subjects interesting and wants to engage with them-- technology, music, reptiles, school, plants, building, creating, life!

• It makes it super fun to be her parent
  
  

• Strong Reader

• could legit read all day without taking a break! even to pee! (That's a whole other strength!)
  
  

• Musical

• both listening to and playing it!

• We've had a string of piano teacher losses, but all of them have loved teaching B because she has so much fun with it.
  
  

• Adaptable

• she’s able to be friends with so many different people, even those who don’t necessarily get along with each other,

• she easily switches from Lizzo to the Avett Brothers
  

• Slow to Judge

• she’s able to be thoughtful about why someone might act a certain way and not be judgemental about it.
  
  

• Silly

• her ability to be goofy allows her to have fun with almost anything she’s doing, even when it's something she's not excited about doing.

• she doesn’t take herself too seriously.

• she's able to bring other people out of their shell with her ease and goofy-ness.

• she’s always down to wrestle, and willing to look bizarre.
  
  

• Helpful

• she rarely complains when we ask her to do stuff, and we ask her a lot.

• her teachers like having her in their class because she is generally quick to get on board with whatever is being asked.

• she's just easy to spend time with because she's agreeable, and in a family that's super helpful.
  
  

• Observant

• esp. of nature- she can watch animals for a really long time.
  
  

• Getting Dirty/Messy

• I’m hesitant to include this as a “strength” but it is true she’s very good at it. And it’s a thing not everyone is willing to do.
  
  

• Funny!

• she has a great sense of humor and can laugh at herself too
  
  

• Animal Whisperer

• she has a way with animals/creatures

• she once stood in grandpa Chuck's field with her hand out to a cow for an hour before it let her touch it because Grandpa said the cows wouldn't let her.
  
  

• Opposite of a perfectionist .

• she experiments and makes progress even when things are imperfect
  
  

• Reliable

• Her collaborator Sam said he always feels safe having his expensive camera equipment in her care and puts her in charge in making sure it returns to the classroom.
  
  

• Open

• To trying new things, new foods
  
  

• Unflappable

• Things just don't phase Berkeley the way they would a lot of others. Even when she's disappointed by something, she kinda just rolls with it.

• A word her preschool teacher used to describe her that still feels accurate
  

• Focused

• when interested she can focus for hours: reading, animating, Swimming (Robyn gets so bored swimming laps over and over.)

The Queen's Gambit

 A true story about me that made watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix a mix of nostalgia, stress, and regret. 

When I moved to Fort Lewis, Washington--after a dismal year in Shelton, a tiny logging town on the Puget sound Peninsula that I absolutely loathed--I spent the first few weeks of my sophomore year of high school avoiding other people by taking lunch in the library. The main perk of the library was that it offered a lot of single-seat tables. These allowed me to avoid the embarrassing task of searching the lunchroom for the communal table least populated with people, none of whom did I know, nor did I look forward to putting in the required work to know them. Plus, I assumed, there would be very few people in the library to potentially see me hiding behind the three-sided privacy desks other students generally used for studying or goofing off. But I did neither of those things. Instead, I ate and read a Dungeons and Dragons book in a perfect little introvert haven. However, much to my surprise, the library was full of activity, and there was always the faint clicking of plastic against plastic during the lunch hour. Eventually my curiosity was piqued enough that I peeked over the wall of my security desk to investigate the source of the daily commotion.

With my eyes hovering just over the edge of the desk’s front privacy wall, I saw four long tables situated near the front of the library where on any given day eight to sixteen kids sat with chess boards and clocks between them. They had gone unnoticed by me prior to that moment because on my way into the library I usually unconsciously filtered these tables out of existence owing to the fact that they suffered from the same curse as those outside of the library: multiple people sat at them. It took a few days for me to gather up the gumption to stand next to a game and watch as a silent spectator after having finished my lunch. I understood the basics: how the pieces moved, that white goes first, the relative value of pieces, and what check and checkmate were. But this was when I first became acquainted with the clock, speed chess, and the almost hypnotic sounds made by a player using one piece to take another and then firmly pressing the clock before placing the freshly taken piece on the wooden table: click-tap-clack. That last clack a subtle assertion of power--I’ve taken your piece, and with it, a part of your dignity.

There were still other things I would learn later, after hundreds of games. I had no sense of strategy, or even tactics, I couldn’t tell you if a move was good or bad unless it was a lesser valued piece taking a greater valued piece (which isn’t always a good metric, but I couldn’t have told you that either) or resulted in mate. I had no idea what tempo was, or that there were openings and end-games or forks, skewers, and pins. And I certainly didn’t know I would obsess over the game for the next three years. I didn’t know that I would spend my time alone thinking about moves and games I had played. I didn’t know I would learn to love the tactile feel of the chipped plastic pieces in my hand. Nor did I know about the joy of mindlessly spinning a pawn between my fingers while contemplating my next move or two. But I get ahead of myself here, pushing all my pawns before I’ve moved any major pieces out.

After a few days watching games, the losing player at the table I was hovering over stood up and left. No one else was around so the winner asked if I wanted to play. I said, “Sure.” I put my backpack on the floor and sat down and expertly arranged the chess pieces. I played black and thought I was smart enough to have a good go at the game. At the time I didn’t know the chess club/team at Lakes High School was a fairly close knit set of people. The boy sitting across from me was a senior and played second board on the team (which made him the second best player at the school). He knew I was not on the team and he probably knew I’d never played a game in the library; his intuition likely told him I was easy pickings. Four moves later he proved the proposition with what we learned from The Queen's Gambit is the scholar’s mate. I felt simultaneously like an idiot--all of the other games I’d watched had taken twenty plus moves to complete--and amazed that such a thing could be achieved. But I didn’t understand at all how it was achieved. Or that it could be replicated. And avoided. A point proven by our second game in which we played out the exact same set of moves, like I was a ghost whose first task is reenacting its own death. After that he walked me through the sequence of moves and explained how to avoid the end result and how you would probably never see the white queen come out like that in a tournament game. I never played another game against him. Such games would not have been fun for either of us. 

I went home with two choices before me: I could either take the day’s whippings as a sign that I wasn’t cut out for the game of chess or I could practice and maybe get a little better. I opted for the latter and asked my dad to play with me that night. He beat me, too, but at least it was a more traditionally lengthed game. After the game I showed him the scholar’s mate; he thought it was pretty cool. Then I went to my bedroom and sat down at my desk and started up a circa 1994 Windows machine. I examined its games to see if it came pre-installed with chess; it did not. I bought one the first opportunity I had. I started with Battle Chess, where the pieces fight whenever any piece is captured. But those games ended up taking too long because of the animation, so I then acquired a more basic chess game without any fancy graphics. At the same time I started playing diligently during school lunch. I ended up playing a lot of chess, multiple hours a day between lunch and the program I had at home. I slowly worked my way up the challenge levels on the computer, and apparently at the lunch tables as well. One day the librarian came over to one of the games I was playing and he asked, “Would you like to join the chess team?” 

Just before chess season started the librarian--who was ostensibly the chess coach as well, but who taught us nothing about chess; he was basically just a chaperone at our tournaments--put together an in-school chess tournament for anyone who wanted to be on the team. The results of the tournament would determine who would sit where on the team. In Washington state high school chess, a team consists of five players and generally the first board is your best player and the fifth board is your fifth best player. Strategy might dictate otherwise but that was how our team was always run. The good news, if you liked playing chess, was that even if you didn’t make it in the top five, you could still participate in the solo tournaments where you faced other players one-on-one. 

I learned a handful of new things during this tournament. I learned that every player has a rating that indicates the relative strength of a player; it goes up as you win and down as you lose during tournament play. People record their games on paper using notations. Lakes High School at the time was home to the number one ranked high school player in Washington state. And, I wasn’t good enough to play board one through five. This last point was not terribly shocking. I had a good sense that the kids older than me had played a lot, and I had been beat by most of them during some lunch or another. But luckily the coach thought a sufficient number of us played well enough that we could field two teams. He selected me to play board three on the Junior Varsity chess team. He assured me it was a good spot for an unrated player and that I should be proud of my progress. 

From there once a month our team would play a single set of games against another team in our district. For these games each player received one and half hours on the clock. Intermixed with these were proper solo tournaments where we played five 60 minute solo games where whomever finished with one of the best three records would win a trophy. Unrated players, and players with less than 1200 rating, were plugged into a reserved section; all others were put into the unreserved section. I started in the lower tier, but worked my way out of it after two tournaments.

The highlights from that year were that in my first reserved tournament I went undefeated, but so did the kid who played board two on my team. Normally three games of speed chess were used to break such ties, however our coach didn’t like that idea of two of his players competing so directly; instead, the first place trophy was offered to my teammate because he had the higher rating. I don’t recall being bummed about that; maybe because based on games we had played at lunch, I was certain I was the better player.

The next tournament I placed first and then I graduated out of the reserved section and had to get used to not even sniffing the top 20 for the remainder of the year. But my game was improving at a respectable pace--I was moved to the first board of our JV team by the time the school year ended. Our varsity team took first in state and three of those players were graduating seniors. Odds were good that I could play on the varsity team my Junior year.

We had a similar in-school tournament for placing again the next year. I played enough with the other kids at that point that I knew I would be board three of the varsity team, the two seniors on the team were boards one and two, though they were unequivocally worse at the game than the prior year’s top two players. Our team did not even place in the top 10 that year; though again at the end of the year I was regularly beating the two players above me during our practice games at lunch and placing higher than them at solo tournaments where I consistently finished in the top 10 to 20.

But the best and, in ways, worst year of my chess life was my senior year. I started the year at board one of our varsity team--making me captain of our chess team--and stayed there for the year. It felt good. We performed well in our monthly team matches. I consistently finished in the top five at solo tournaments; even picking up a few more trophies. Let me regale you with the highlights of the year.

I learned a new opening--The Queen’s Gambit. I made it my opening of choice when I played white. I wasn’t the type of player to read books about the game. It pains me to think about how good I could have been with some book learning or a chess tutor. I picked up the opening playing against the computer and I memorized a sufficient number of moves for the opening that I could play it well enough to win against the computer as frequently as I did when I played the more traditional king's-pawn openings. But it had a distinct advantage in high school tournaments: the players didn’t have a database of moves behind them. Which to say, 98% of the humans I played against were encountering Queen's Gambit for the first time when they sat across the table from me and thus didn’t know how to play against it. I couldn’t analyze the opening and tell you what its strengths and weaknesses actually were, but I knew I won games when I played it. It flummoxed anyone who wasn’t a top ten player. I played hundreds of practice games with Queen’s Gambit so that I could gain a quick positional advantage in most games in which I played white and watch my opponent squirm after my first two moves.

Not all students in the state showed up to all of the solo tournaments. This meant that sometimes I was the top rated player at a tournament, and by the end of the year I was always near the top, and so rarely did my opponents have any experience playing against the Queen’s Gambit. That year I only played in one solo tournament with one of the top three kids in the state. In round four of five we had the same 3-0 record and I sat across from him. I was kind of star struck. He came in with purple hair and a leather jacket; he didn’t say a word to me before we shook hands and started playing. He oozed cool in a way I prior would have thought impossible for a high school kid playing chess to pull off. I was a little unnerved, his rating was 200 points higher than mine, but I played a respectable game; at one point late in the game I probably could have requested a draw and he might have given it to me. But I blundered in the end game and he beat me before going on to take the top prize for the day. Still, I walked away feeling confident in my game and ability. Playing against the Queen’s Gambit was dicey for even a player of his caliber, but my early advantage only lasted so long before his overall skill overcame it.

However, I did get a little taste of what it felt like to sit on his side of the board because I was the highest rated player in my school district; which meant in our monthly team play I was feared by opponents. I had a reputation in that little corner of the world! It’s the closest I’ve ever come to being famous. There were few enough teams that we eventually played every team in the district twice before the top two teams were sent to the state tournament. I recall playing one young lad the first time and beating him in about 12 moves. It was a very quick and decisive game for tournament play. I assume his team was their JV team given the low quality of his play at first board. The quick win felt good, but what felt better was later that year when our teams matched up again he came up to the table where I was already seated, and when he saw me he sighed and said, “Oh man, not you again.” This was a major highlight of my short lived chess career. I only lost one game in team play that year. It was late in the year when my game play was dipping in quality. I was playing considerably worse at the three hour team games than I was at the hour long games at the solo tournaments. I was having a hard time focusing on games that lasted that long.   

The second high point of my chess career came at the state tournament that year. Playing board one I went two and three against the best players in the state, including a game against the number one ranked player, Andy Van Dyke. His rating was a full 300 points higher than mine. The other members of my team all did better than I did and we took second in state, Andy’s team didn’t finish in the top five. The team accomplishment was nice, but my game against Andy was what I remember most about that day, and year; it was an emotional roller coaster.

When the round was posted and I saw I would be playing him I knew there was no chance of me winning. It had already been a rough day eeking out a couple wins and losing to some of the best players in the state. Everyone on the team knew I wouldn’t have a great record at the end of the day; it’s the fate of a board one player who isn’t a top five player. But it was still kind of a gut punch. And then to sit across from Andy, where you know people will be coming by to see how the game’s progress--I just couldn’t imagine it going well. But it did. It went surprisingly well. I went up a piece for a pawn in the mid-game and had an aggressive line on his king with my two rooks. The tournament hall was buzzing with whispers that someone was beating Andy Van Dyke--no one ever beat Andy Van Dyke. I could see in his body language that my assessment of the game matched his: he was losing on pieces and position. But here is where experience reigned supreme. He stayed calm. My nerves and adrenaline worked against me, and I blundered, dropping one of my rooks only a few moves later. The hall went back to quiet, the crowd around our board dissipated. And before long I resigned. I congratulated him on the win and he said I should have won, that I played too defensive after going up. I almost beat Andy Van Dyke and he fucking knew it. 

I was certain on that day that had I not intuited my way through chess the past three years, but rather spent the time in a more formal study of the game, like Andy likely did, I could have beat him on that fateful day, and that in another timeline I was easily the top one or two players in the state my senior year. This point was later further confirmed to me in college.

I played a little in college, very informal with other students in the dining hall, no tournaments. Then I met this Russian guy named Mike who was also a computer science major like myself. Mike was diligent and hard working, but the topic didn’t come to him as easily as it did to me. I loved working with him; his hard work was inspirational and humbling. One day we were talking about chess and how I played and he said, “I would definitely beat you.” He too had played in high school. But not thousands of games like I did, but with a tutor and study, going at it like he did his school work. And, as promised, he wrecked me even though he said he hadn’t played in four years. He walked the game back and showed me all the things I did wrong and explained how he controlled the board with his pieces and how my pieces were doing absolutely no good for me where I put them. He came at it like a science rather than an art, which was the opposite of how I felt I played.

Watching The Queen’s Gambit reminded me much of my failure at chess. Not that I was ever destined to be a grand master or even a master. But I could have been really good at it, but I let it slip away because sitting down with a book seemed boring, and frankly, hard (though at the time I probably didn’t recognize that latter hurdle). Unfortunately this is not a singular occurrence. I feel I’ve based much of my life around doing what is easy and avoiding what is challenging, this to my own detriment. Math has always been easy for me, and so every educational and professional choice I’ve made has hinged on that fact. Math is easy -> computer science is easy -> getting a job is easier than grad school -> staying where I am is easier than changing jobs or moving -> computer science is easier than writing -> writing is hard -> avoid writing -> write so little that it all ends up being trash. The corollary is also true around my fear of public speaking. Public speaking is hard for me -> avoid anything in school that would require it -> avoid applying for any job that would require it -> avoid promotions or job changes that would require more of it. 

These are things I thought about while watching the ups and downs of The Queen’s Gambit (in addition to re-experiencing some of the mental exhaustion of playing a long set of games). I feel like I never made that second move in life; I never put anything at risk; I’ve stayed safe. At forty-two I’m doing the type of engineering work that most leave behind in their thirties to move into management roles in order to make the big bucks. I could have been better at a lot of things. I could have shined. Which isn’t to say I haven’t accomplished anything in my life. But I wrestle with a lot of what-could-have-beens when it comes to career choices I’ve made because of either fear or to avoid doing hard things. Sometimes I feel like I keep letting life scholar’s mate me over and over. Or that I never pushed that second pawn and gave life the opportunity to accept my gambit. Thanks Netflix. I loved the series.

Jury Duty

Prior to this month I had been called a few times, but I never served.

I found the experience highly interesting, and it required that I think about some aspects of the criminal justice system I'd never really given a lot of consideration to. Here are the highlights:

1) The lawyers seemed mostly interested in selecting people who have as few opinions as possible about anything important. Their optimal jurist would be a lump of clay. I don't know what this says about me since I was selected. I did make an effort to get kicked off by talking about how the war on drugs has disproportionately effected black men and done super crazy things to our incarceration rates. Given the defendant was black I thought maybe I'd get dropped for the comment.
2) I'm pretty certain had I not been on the jury the defendant would have been convicted of at least one felony. I felt a little bit like a superhero afterward.
3) Three or four other jurists were pretty hardcore about the defendant being guilty at the beginning of our deliberations. The fact that they were able to change their minds and eventually, with out anger, come around to a not guilty verdict restored some of my faith in humanity.
4) Practically everyone I saw at the courthouse on trial was black.
5) The law and/or judge asks you to put your conscience and morals on hold to perform this duty. In as much as they'll admit this is what they're asking you for, they stress its only temporary. But this is one of the few times in your life when your morals/conscience have a chance to have a direct and profound impact on a person. It's a strange dichotomy. In particular they ask that you pass judgement on someone without any consideration of the punishment (which is decided by the judge).
6) The "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" business is a really high bar. I'm glad it is in place.

Bonus items:
7) More than once while walking to the courthouse I heard two homeless people arguing about the importance of Edward Snowden. This felt uniquely San Francisco to me.
8) If you don't want to sound like a complete crazy person do not, under any circumstance, dictate long angry texts to Siri. At best she'll make you look nuts; at worst she'll make you sound like you're threatening to kill someone.

A Perfect World:

A Work of Fiction

Let me tell you about a perfect world. Let me tell you what I can. First and foremost when they said, "get up, everyone rise," then everyone would stand.

When I was six years old my daddy said to me, "you'll love school. They'll take good care of you. They'll teach you numbers and words and how to be kind to one another." I had visions of Harry Potter lunch boxes, and the number eight decorated like snowmen. My dad, he wore a tie my first day of school. He dropped me off in wing-tipped shoes and a suit. Then he went home and changed into the plain pants and shirt of a self taught electrician before heading to work. That's a perfect world.

More than anything, Charlotte loved Hello Kitty.  She had a Hello Kitty binder, a Hello Kitty backpack, Hello Kitty shoes and pencils. She had it all. That was a perfect world.

The thing is, my dad probably had the words and the fear to tell me what I really needed to hear. He doesn't talk about it now so who can say for sure. All things being equal he'd prefer to never talk about it again. But all things aren't equal. I know that much now; school taught me something.

Can you imagine--no you can't, you shouldn't--but can you imagine, sitting down with your child and saying, "well son, this is a big step in your life. You're going to learn to read and write, and you'll be safe, but just in case, let me tell you what to do, just in case."

You know he has to pause here. You can't tell a six year old what he’s about to tell his child without second guesses. So he pauses and then breaks the news, that maybe the world isn't always quite so safe. Imagine the dryness of his lips, how his bowels might feel, the tears he fights back because this is the conversation he has to have with the human being he might love most and whose most complicated thought up to this point has been whether Superman is stronger than the Hulk.

"It's just that sometimes bad things happen when we least expect them," he'd say. "So if, God forbid, something bad happens, listen to your teachers. But also know that if you hear gunshots get down and pretend to be dead." Then he'd lay on the ground and put his arms and legs at awkward angles. "Look at me son, this is how you do it. Do you see me?"

But you can't see him down there. Your brain literally can't comprehend what he's doing, you're too young. What is he talking about guns for? The prospect of school excited you a few minutes ago but what is this? Everything is mildly sinister now. Maybe you'd better stay home.

Eventually, months later you would have thanked him, but all you can see now are nines and sixes with a bullet hole in each and an eight with two, the class turtle wandering across broken glass and a bloody floor. Why's your dad got to be so weird? Why'd he put these images in your head?

"And if all else fails, run. Run fast and in a zigzag line. Run away. Don't worry about where to. You run and run and run until you're lost and then I'll find you." He mimics a zigzag run, too. You'd watch this dumbfounded. He might as well be an alien. And you’d giggle, because you’re only six years old.

But that’s no way to start a new school year. Instead we pack lunches and take pictures in our new sneakers and Ninjago t-shirts. Everything is normal in a perfect world.

Olivia had the best smile. And her shirts always had some uplifting message on them: love, joy, and happiness. She wore her hair back and never had a harsh word for anyone. In a perfect world everyone would experience her smile.

I use to believe in a perfect world. But then one day a stranger walked into my class. In his hands he held dark and angry steel. I thought it had to be a toy but then it spoke. It’s voice never to be surpassed in vile and ugliness. TAT! TAT! TAT! All I could do was scream. I was six years old. I didn't know what was happening. My dad hadn't prepared me for this. All the sharpened pencils and virginal notebooks in the world were rendered useless. The world was nothing. Nada. The world was the concussions. TAT! TAT! TAT! You could feel it in your ears and in your teeth. The TAT! TAT! TAT! was everything. It was I who was nothing.

Something primal arrived, something ancient, something that desires life more than all. Something drug me to the ground, like some great beast separating the Earth; it put its clawed hands over my mouth and pulled me to the floor. Then he left, the great wrecker. I'd never see him again. I've never not see him again.

There were echoes of it still. Somewhere off in the distance, Tat! Tat! Tat! Then there were sirens.

In times of great stress people talk of boulders and elephants on their chests, but it was more than that that held me down, that stole my breath. It was a mountain. No, it was an entire range. I saw my mother and father come from the west, the Appalachians cradled in their arms. They placed them there on my chest and whispered, "be still." Even my shaking stopped.

Then there was silence, or something like silence. It went on and on, long like the time we drove to Kansas to visit my Aunt and I faded in and out of sleep in the back seat of the minivan, listening to thunder and the hum of the engine. Until at last, one more Tat and then the sobs of little children. Mine and there’s all bundled together, like sticks to a fire. The singular sound of the world put to tears and lives put ruin.

Eventually there were footsteps and people speaking and someone said, "get up, everyone rise." But only half of us could stand. And so now, I’ve given up on a perfect world.

Some mornings when I wake I don't think about that day first thing. Some days the memory isn't there like a kid drowning under a frozen lake, beating at the surface of everything. Those are good days, days as close to perfect as I'll ever see. But even on those days I can still stumble upon the remnants. There's always another shooting. There is always Syria, and pictures of boys barely alive in the back of ambulances or washed up dead on beaches they never called home. There is always someone on the internet telling the world, telling me, telling my dead friends' parents, that it never even happened, that it was just an elaborate hoax to get guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens. But all I can see is that man. That boy--my Mama tells me he was just a boy. And his TAT! TAT! TAT!  

If only none of it were real; if only we lived in a perfect world.