One of my greatest fears has been realized, something that I dreaded since the trauma of Peter's heart condition began to fade into its familiar numbness: Kids can be mean. Peter came home from school the other day, and, after crawling into his mother's lap, talked to her about his experience thus far in kindergarten. He explained that, yet again, he had not had any friends to play with during recess. In fact, on the whole, he doesn't feel that he has friends in his class at all. "It didn't work, Mommy," he said. "What didn't work, Peter?" she asked. "Being nice. You said that being nice will make other kids be nice to me and that's how I get friends. But it didn't work." Then he started to cry. Hearing this story stabs me right to my heart. It could be, as Hamlet says, by "thinking too precisely on the event", and thus this is an overwrought analysis, but I can't help but wonder if the things we did to
Personal musings of Steven Dowdle