Safe Haven

 The people with the tough, hard exterior are just scared. Scared to love, and scared to be loved. I can see right through them. Kids are like this, too. Growing into adolescence, you can’t show fear, or vulnerability, or need. Especially boys. The only trouble is, if you do enough bad things pretending to be hard, you become that. If you don’t break out of that, you’ll hurt yourself and others—maybe badly—and wonder how it all went so wrong. I taught a kid like this once. He probably should have graduated the other day. We’ll call him “Matt.” I should say, I attempted to teach him. No fooling, he tormented me. When you’re young, testing boundaries is part of the deal. But in strong families, with luck, you get to test your own boundaries while you grow up. If not, they test them on the green and profoundly disabled teacher. This sad story wasn’t my fault, objectively. I know that. But I still think about that kid. I question everything I said and did. On the other hand, the next t...