This year, I have a new head of department and a new principal, both of whom saw my question and individually contacted me about it. The previous principals and department heads also saw my response to that field but probably felt like I was just venting and there was no need for follow up.

My new head of department, who is a good friend of mine, was the first to say something. She asked that I not respond in that manner because 1) the passive-aggressive approach wasn’t going to work in creating change and 2) it was upsetting to her, even though she knew it wasn’t directed at her. She had a point. If I was genuinely trying to elicit change, then it clearly hadn’t worked yet. More importantly, I absolutely do not want to do anything to make her day worse as she has done so much for me.

The second person to say something was my new principal, who spoke towards her role as an advocate for teachers. She felt that she could evaluate the reason and perhaps direct the employee to use a sick day instead.

In both cases, I felt that both of them had my best interest at heart. I agreed that a better approach would be to directly contact HR (they have yet to respond to my direct email asking that they remove the field form the website) and in the future, to just keep it vague if I don’t feel like getting into details of why I was taking off. However, I also felt the need to share my own experiences of why I don’t feel comfortable putting personal details about myself into a work-related system.

Shortly after Lucas died, the middle school administration kindly gave me informal permission to leave after my teaching day was done. There is an employee sign-out sheet in the office that teachers record when they leave or come back to school. There used to be a blank space to write the reason. Having to fill in that blank each day filled me with anxiety. I just didn’t know what I should write. I generally wrote something along the lines of “sad,” “depressed,” or “Lucas.”. I noticed that eventually that field got removed from the sign-out sheet, which was a relief.

Another point I wrote in my response to my principal was about how based on past history, I have reason to be mistrustful of department heads and middle school principals. That hasn’t been an issue for a while, but with the revolving door our school’s administration has become, I wouldn’t want to have anything in writing. While our new principal has been warm and open in the several weeks that I have known her and I trust my department head implicitly, I am guarded about the future.

For the record, I know I am certainly not being cautious in putting my personal thoughts and feelings for strangers to read. I just don’t want to have a record in any school-based software.

Before I continue, I would like to say that since Lucas has died, everyone at my school has been helpful and understanding in supporting me and I have no specific reason why that would change. At the same time, I would be naive to believe that there is no possibility that it could change.

Now for the bombshell that no one is surprised by. Regardless of what people say, there is still a stigma towards any kind of health issue – mental or physical.

Most recently, actress Hayden Panettiare has been in the news following her death at age 36. Known primarily for her roles in the television series “Heroes,” and “Nashville,” Panettaire was also the face of the skin-care product Neutrogena for ten years. The company pulled her sponsorship after she publicly talked about how she was suffering from post-partum depression, a condition that ten to twenty percent of new mothers suffer from. Neutrogena allegedly cited a morality clause in her contract that she violated by speaking about a “downer topic.”

As a child actress, she also suffered from addiction issues stemming from the people on her publicity team giving her “happy pills” at the age of 15 to aid with her anxiety for red carpet walks and so she would appear “peppy” during interviews. Years later, when she relinquished custody of her daughter to a more stable household in order to focus on her own rehabilitation, she dealt with public outcry of abandoning her child. Her resulting years of alcohol and drug abuse ended in her early death in mid-August of this year.

She did the things we say we want people to do. In an attempt to destigmatize post-partum depression, she openly talked about a condition that millions of new mothers deal with. She moved her daughter into a more stable environment while she attempted to get her life together. She did these things and was chastised for them.

Closer to home, I am reminded of my friend David in the months prior to his death. The public message was to take time to focus on his health. Privately, he felt the pressure to come back. I can’t speak directly to whether the pressure was coming from school or from himself. I suspect that it was a combination of both. However, the pressure from school to “hurry up and get better” was most definitely greater than zero percent. This, on top of the worries over his health, his inability to sleep in a hospital environment, or even eat solid foods.

Now to me. As mentioned, I received solid support from people who cared about me. As the years go by, those people are leaving my place of employment and are being replaced by new people who weren’t around when Lucas died. In addition, I have had people tell me how impressed they are at my strength in the face of tragedy. I thank them for saying so.

Here’s what I don’t often say. I have seen friends hit a rough patch in their lives and not pull things together. People who took too long to recover from whatever tragedy life bestowed upon them and lost even more. I know that no matter what people say, there is a limit to the length of time that is acceptable to turn things around. That limit is not openly stated and only becomes apparent after the person takes too long to recover. People have said that they were surprised at how I rushed things in getting back to work. All I know is that I wasn’t willing to push the limit of people’s patience for me to get better.

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Part of the joke was that the man with his diminutive five foot six inch frame (my height) fit nicely into the dryer. One of the other characters pointed out that he was visibly shorter than that. The joke was that he must have set the dryer on “high” and shrunk himself, thus “disfiguring” himself in the process.

After doing some research, I learned that this episode was from 1987 and named “A Day in the Life” but for some odd reason, I was unable to find clips of it anywhere. It seems that our modern sensibilities no longer find the subject of attempted suicide a laugh riot and thus not a suitable topic for a TV sitcom. Go figure.

I have since learned that the situation in this show would likely be referred to as a second-degree suicide attempt.

In the process of completing training for suicide prevention, I was asked to read the book “Suicide: The Forever Decision” by Dr. Paul G. Quinnett. In the book, the author describes the clinical descriptions of suicide in terms of degrees much like we would describe murder or burns.

First-degree suicide attempts are planned, deliberate, premeditated acts involving the most lethal means. The previously mentioned second-degree attempt is, “more impulsive, unplanned, and not as well thought out.” Third degree attempts “are those in which the person deliberately puts himself in a dangerous situation in which he may die, but his intent is not so clear.”

After reading these descriptions, I have come to the conclusion that Lucas’s death was the result of a third-degree suicide attempt. While it is unlikely that he intended to die, he put himself in a dangerous situation which had a high probability of ending his life.

In addition, Dr. Quinnett talks about suicides that don’t result in death but create lasting damage. He describes some situations in which doctors or nurses have saved someone form a suicide attempt only to say afterwards, “Maybe they would have been better off dead.”

He spoke of the teen-aged boy who survived the self-inflicted gunshot to the head, but damaged his brain enough where he has to live in a nursing home the rest of his life. The woman who jumped from a bridge and broke her back, necessitating living her life in a wheelchair. The woman who cut her wrists, not only creating nasty scars, but severing tendons and limiting her ability to play piano, a pastime that she loved. The intended overdose that put the person in a coma they never recovered from. The man who hanged himself, cutting off oxygen to the brain long enough to create permanent brain damage. It’s this last example that truly haunts me.

I’ve thought about this possibility over the past few years. In my darker moments, I used to ponder, What if Lucas had not ended his life, but instead created severe or even moderate brain damage to himself? How would he feel about it? How would I react? What kind of person does that make me?

It was this portion of the book that reminded me of the episode of Night Court. I remember watching this scene as an adolescent and thinking how awful it would be to have a life that you felt was not worth living and to make it measurably worse. This was clearly a questionable topic for a sitcom, yet this scene stayed with me.

While I never considered suicide, the memory of this episode was one motivation for always searching out ways I could improve my life. Even when I was a moody teen-ager and thought things sucked, I felt I had the power to make them better if I could find the solution. I recognized that if I just moped around, things were less likely to improve and that certain ways of acting out could potentially make my life worse.

I recognized the irony of a person surviving a suicide attempt, finding themselves in a worse position than before the attempt, and then wishing for the life they had prior to the attempt. This brought to mind my apathy towards my own life shortly after Lucas died.

Based on the number of bicycle accidents I’ve been in, many people consider me reckless, though it was never out of hopelessness or anger. If anything, my pushing myself to my limits was born out of thrill-seeking and most of the resulting accidents borne out of inattention. However, there was a time after Lucas died when my careless habits such as darting through an intersection on my bicycle without looking for cars would be more along the lines of apathy, not caring what happened to me. It was after I considered the possibility of serious injury or what it would mean for my friends and family if I died that I adjusted my riding habits and self care routine.

Nowadays, I value my life immensely, not just for the people who care about me, but for myself. Still, I wonder what people would have said about me had I died in a bicycle accident. Would people have considered my death a suicide?

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At the age of 30, actor Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Years later, he called his memoirs “Lucky Man.” I listened to him read the audiobook of his story in which he talks about his Parkinson’s diagnosis in the manner a person talks about an old friend. As I listened, I assumed that the implied title of the book was ”Lucky Man...For Someone with Parkinson’s Disease.” I mean, how on earth could anyone consider themselves to be lucky for getting a degenerative affliction?

Another example is from an account on Substack that I have been following called “ExtraOrdinary.” It’s written by a woman named Liz Kazanci who has a toddler with Down’s Syndrome. She admits that while she was pregnant, she had a DNA test done which missed her son’s diagnosis and that she can’t honestly say if she would have ended the pregnancy if she had known. Despite this, she is grateful that her son has Down’s Syndrome. She goes on to say that she can’t imagine her son any other way and 99% of the hardship of her son’s condition is managing other people’s reaction to it.

In both of these circumstances, many people might pity Mr. Fox or Ms. Kazanci, holding them up as a model of strength. The words, Thank god that isn’t meor I don’t know what I would do if that was me might go through their heads.

There are definitely people who crumble under challenging circumstances. Even those who have come to embrace their circumstances had adverse reactions initially. Michael J. Fox began drinking heavily after he learned of his diagnosis. Liz Kazanci, by her own admission, was devoid of emotion the first few days of her son’s life, not wanting to be congratulated as few people knew of her son’s diagnosis. She got irritated at her husband’s use of the word “lucky.”

What I have found is that the people who persevere are the ones who are able to get past seeing themselves as the victim. Sure, they may view the situation in negative terms initially, but eventually are able to move forward from that mindset and view it as just another part of life. When you can move beyond seeing yourself as a victim, that opens up the space to do what the situation requires.

Mark Manson, the author of “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck,” distinguished between blame and responsibility. If you are driving a car that is hit by a drunk driver, the drunk driver is to blame. Let’s say that your legs are crushed in the accident, requiring you to do years of extensive, painful physical therapy in order to be able to walk again. You are the one responsible for making that happen. No amount of lamenting your unfortunate circumstances, and no amount of punishment that you could bestow on the drunk driver will help you walk again. The responsibility for doing the physical therapy to get out of the wheelchair is yours.

We often encounter situations in our life that we have little control over. We always have control over how we react to those circumstances. What most people call good luck or bad luck are only a manifestation of the immediate outcomes and do not take into account the path on which the situation puts their lives. After an incident, the person is responsible for choosing actions and a mindset that can send their life along different paths. While none of the options may be desirable initially, some are better than others. A positive, more open mindset will likely lead to more positive outcomes.

While it’s hard to be positive when the immediate situation is devastating, overcoming a difficult situation can lead to immense growth.

Michael J. Fox didn’t shake his fist at the heavens, and ask “Why me?” Well, he actually did for a while, but after that didn’t work, he used the circumstances created by his affliction to get his life together. He is thankful at how his Parkinson’s saved him from a life that was starting to get out of control. Liz Kazanci doesn’t only view her son’s life through the lens of his limitations. She sees him for the loving, beautiful boy that he is and wouldn’t want him any other way.

I have spoken of an interview of Stephen Colbert in which he quotes JRR Tolkien, “What punishments from God are not gifts?” This question has taken on new meaning for me over the past year. Misfortune is a part of our lives and helps to guide who we are. It took years for me, but knowing that I have no control over my son Lucas being gone, I took the opportunity to see my life in a different lens. While I can’t envision a world where I am thankful for his death, I have learned to be grateful for the insight that it has given me.

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After a year, the other two were gone and I was the last man standing. At the beginning of my fourth year, it was announced that the principal had found a new job in his home country of Australia and would be leaving our school mid-year in December. Whether or not I would be given another contract was still up in the air. I was on pins and needles up through late November when I was offered the contract. Even though we had a couple of weeks to decide, I signed and handed in the contract within hours of getting it in case he was somehow able to change his mind.

I believe that it was through the combination of the people who stood up for me, the hard work I put in each staying until eight or nine each night, and the luck of Shaun’s plan to leave which is why I still have my job.

At the same time, those rough years when I was working late nights coincided with the time when Lucas needed me and I should have been giving him my attention.

After a new principal came into the school, my head of department ended his crusade against me. Ever the good soldier, he no longer had a mandate to create a case to fire me. Oddly enough, when presented with a supportive environment, my teaching improved dramatically.

I have since confronted my now former head of department over this and he gave an answer along the lines of how he was just following orders and pushed the blame on my former principal. While plausible, I don’t fully buy it.

When looking back, I think what might have happened had I been more present and available for Lucas. I have made my peace with the department head, but have been harboring an intense resentment towards Shaun. While I don’t absolve myself from blame, I can’t stop thinking about how Shaun once said to me as a suggestion that my employer owed me nothing when he said, “You have to realize that the school isn’t here to serve you, you are here to serve the school.”

I used to imagine myself, years later, confronting Shaun about my perception of how his calloused attitude indirectly contributed to Lucas’s death.

When Tia was in seventh grade, a teacher noted that she could throw well and recommended that she try out for softball. Tia then went out for the pre-season training during the winter in preparation and was gutted when the same teacher who encouraged her to try out, the softball coach, cut her from the team in the spring.

I was extremely resentful of this person for years. What didn’t help was that she is a likable person with whom I developed a friendship. I wanted to mention to her about the incident, but never quite knew how to bring it up or even if I should. Still, it felt like a barrier between us.

At one point last week when preparing for the school year, one of our math department meeting agreements was to assume positive intent. A friend and fellow teacher suggested that we should assume positive intent not only with the people in our department, but with the administrators at our school when creating policies that we don’t agree with. That thought began percolating in my mind.

Later that day, I was listening to a podcast in which Amanda Knox discussed her wrongful conviction for the murder of her roommate while on study abroad in Italy in 2007. (For a refresher on the case, click here.) Amanda Knox’s conviction was overturned due to an overwhelming lack of evidence and a coerced confession in a language she barely understood.

For years, she harbored resentment towards the prosecutor in her case, who she believed acted badly. She could not get him to admit that he had been wrong. She spent years corresponding with him. In her effort to humanize herself, they discussed far-reaching topics in no way related to her case. Eventually, she was able to arrange a face to face meeting with him. She realized that if she were to ask something of him, she was relying on something outside of herself and would likely be disappointed. Instead, she spoke the following words to him, which she later read on the podcast.

“I want you to know that I am innocent. I had nothing to do with Merideth’s murder. You were wrong about me. I was treated as if I were guilty until and unless I could convince you and your colleagues of my innocence. And I failed to do that. But I am not here to convince you of my innocence. I am here to let you know that whether you’ve realized your mistake or not, I do not think you are an evil person.”

At this point in the podcast, Amanda Knox’s normally clear and steady voice began to break up, even years after speaking these words to the man largely responsible for her imprisonment.

“I want you to know that despite the fact that I am still hurt today. I am grateful for my experience in which you played an important and influential role. I am grateful because I learned things about myself that I never would have known. Both how weak and vulnerable I can be and how strong I am.”

Hearing her speak these words of resilience and growth with a shaky voice were enough to get me to break down in tears. I realized that I have been harboring resentment towards so many people for so long.

While not grateful for Lucas’s death, I am grateful for the experience that has taught me how vulnerable yet strong I can be. I needed to let go of that resentment and to assume positive intentions on the part of everyone who I believed had wronged me, both directly and indirectly.

One of the first things that I did was to take my friend aside to tell her about the resentment I have been holding onto regarding her decision to cut Tia from the softball team in seventh grade. I never felt like there was ever any ill intent on her part, but had never thought much beyond how I thought it had affected Tia. Once I assumed positive intent, the conversation became much easier to initiate.

Without getting into details, we had a fantastic conversation in which we discussed insecurities held by each of us. She shared vulnerabilities with her lack of confidence in the responsibility thrust upon her. I shared my own experiences of how some parents must have felt like I didn’t give their children the experience with math that they hoped for.

While I am entirely over that experience, having that conversation felt as if a barrier had been removed between us and I believe we are much closer as a result.

This wasn’t the last conversation and I believe was only a warm-up. There are a few others that I am preparing for. For me, the challenge is not in the conversation itself, it is in the opportunity and execution. For now, I will continue to look for opportunities to clear the air by speaking of my past resentment of decisions they made and my understanding that they were doing their best.

For me, the white whale is to sit down with Shaun to talk things through with him. In all likelihood, he has no idea I feel this way and in his mind there is no need to have a conversation. He may not have thought about me for years. Regardless of whether or not I talk with him face to face, if he reads this, I want him to know that I assume that he had positive intentions.

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He was also completely correct.

I had to tell him that apart from one or two minor frustrations recently, I do enjoy my life very much. I have found peace in my daily routines.

A day or two before I flew back to Taipei from Wisconsin, Mina messaged me and asked if I was ready to get back to my regular life. I told her that I was looking forward to it. Even with the summer ending, and the school year approaching, I am relaxed about it.

Years ago, I would utterly dread the coming school year. Rather than see it as a terrible burden to endure, going back to work is fine, just different.

With this peace of mind, I feel like I am in a fantastic position to advise people how to live their lives. Clearly I have things figured out.

Except my son killed himself.

That destroys any possible sense of superiority that I could ever have. Even other people who are nervous, anxious wrecks or people who have extreme views about the world more than likely do not have any children who ended their own lives.

Recently, the comment sections on some of my Substack posts were taken over by a guy who told me unequivocally that I was an awful person, a terrible example to my son, and that is why he killed himself. This person went on to say that despite the fact that his ex wife had broken off communication with him and kept his children from him, he was still a better example to his children than I was because his children were still alive and mine was dead. I couldn’t even argue.

Do I actually believe this to be true? No. Would I be a flaming asshole to other people if Lucas was still alive? Again, no.

Still, I have to think that if that one missing piece was in place, if Lucas were still alive and thriving, I would possibly harbor the sense of superiority that I had life figured out. That my life was great because I had unlocked the secret to living a balanced life.

You know what I’m talking about. That same smug attitude of childless couples giving parenting advice to their friends with children. The attitude of the person who got the job by the luck of the draw and then deigns to give career advice to every person that they know because they have it figured out rather than admit that they were in the right place at the right time. The person who was fortunate enough to not have to care for a sick loved one. The person who had a family who put them through college and supported them through it all. The person who worked hard and took advantage of the opportunities given to them without acknowledging that there are other hard-working people who were never given those opportunities. The person who is where they are because they earned it.

I don’t know if I would have become that person, but with the death of Lucas, with the imperfection in my life, I have become much more humble. I try to share my thoughts with friends regarding how they could improve aspects of their lives they are working on while at the same time accepting them for who they are and that they may not want to or be able to take the actions I suggest..

While I try to enjoy my life, I certainly don’t hold myself up as a shining example of how to live. I have worked to have a sense of humility.

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Years ago, it used to be more cycling centered, but as it has evolved, the people who focus on doing the thirty-six or so bonus challenges tend to do the best. I used to focus on the cycling aspect, but recently, have been treating it as a means of hanging out with friends and meeting new people.

This year, I decided to be more casual about the riding aspect, but my competitive nature won out and during the last three hours, I really pushed to reach a goal that I missed by minutes, which really annoyed me.

At that point, I realized that two of my friends who were in a different category from me were in the top three places. This was a fantastic opportunity to hang out and cheer them on as they took the podium. It would have been so easy to drop my bike off at my car, slam a bottle of Gatorade, and walk back with a couple of drinks to hang out with my friends. Yet, I didn’t do it. Instead, I said goodbye for the summer, packed up, and left. The next day, when I thought about it, I regretted not sticking around for the ceremony and it bothered me for almost a whole week.

Another instance of regret comes to mind with regards to my twenty-five year college reunion. Because the event was canceled the previous year due to Covid, the weekend celebrated both the year I should have graduated and the year I actually graduated. That meant I was in a position to hang out with the people I started college with and the people I finished with. In addition, it was a rare year when I was in Milwaukee while the reunion was happening. The stars aligned and this was never going to happen again. I could have so easily signed up for the reunion, contacted my college roommates, and had some people to go with. Or, I could have just gone to see who I knew and left if I felt uncomfortable. I chose not to go and for years was frustrated with my decision.

Both of these situations have a similar theme of regret. When looking back, I ask myself, “What was I thinking?”

A much larger regret that I have faced is with not getting Lucas more help when he was in seventh grade. At that time, he asked me to take him to a counselor to get tested for ADHD. The testing was more involved than I had expected. After an initial diagnosis of borderline ADHD, the counselor wanted to do more testing. I said “no thank you” and didn’t follow up for years. I could have just scheduled a further appointment for Lucas for follow-up and taken some time out of my weekend for a legitimate concern that was important to my son.

Clearly, this regret is much larger than the first two.

The problem with all three of these examples is that I am looking at them through the mindset that I have at this moment, a time when I am well-rested, confident in myself, not feeling pressure from work, and with the benefit of hindsight.

At the end of the bicycle ride, I was exhausted from having gotten little sleep, tired and dehydrated from having ridden at a fast pace non-stop for three hours, pissed off because I missed getting checked in by less than two minutes, and overwhelmed by the crowd of people around the start/finish location where everyone was hanging out. Sure, I could have gone back to my car, rested, then gone back to my friends, but that was not obvious with my mindset at the time.

Regarding the reunion, not only was it the first time that I was back in Wisconsin in three years, it was the first time I had been back since Lucas died. I was hesitant to see and talk to people who I knew loved me and cared about me. I was broken. The thought of seeing people I hadn’t talked to in 25 years was not something I was interested in.

Around the time Lucas asked to get an ADHD diagnosis, I was feeling the pressure of not only trying to manage a new job, but I had a supervisor and principal who were actively trying to get rid of me. I was busy working on weekends and valued what little time I had to relax.

None of these are proper excuses, yet they do explain why I didn’t make the decisions that seem rational now: I wasn’t in the best state of mind at the time.

I have previously stated that “We have to trust that we made the best decision with the information that we had at the time.” After some thought, I would like to add: “We have to trust that we made the best decision with the state of mind that we had at the time.” I have found that thinking back to remember what my mental or emotional state was each time I made the various decisions in my life has been helpful in forgiving myself for not making what now seem like obvious choices.

Moving forward, these examples are useful to look back on when making future decisions. They are a lesson to stop, consider my state of mind, and then think if I need to take a few minutes to reconsider the situation. At the very least, they are an opportunity to give myself grace regarding decisions that I regret.

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I have also been writing about the steps I have been taking to improve my mindset and learning to live with my grief and continue on with my life. Recently, I had a nagging suspicion that some of my writing was not entirely relatable. Some of the steps that I have been taking, even before Lucas died, were not things that others thought about or did.

One friend of mine, in reading my description of my philosophies and actions I was taking, in reading my laments of how I could have been more appreciative of the time I had with Lucas, told me that he has never reflected on things in the manner in which I have. He mentioned in a kind way that some of my thinking was arrogant, not quite the word he was looking for. To be more precise, I was being presumptuous, assuming that many people live their daily lives while thinking about their own mortality and how to better live their lives.

Maybe they do and maybe they don’t.

In considering his thinking, I was reminded of a guy I worked with while in my early twenties named Scotty. He was a stay-at-home dad in the daytime and would go to his bartending job when his wife came home from work. Scotty didn’t drink, but was widely accepted among the managers and staff of the bar where we worked. I later learned that this straight-laced guy had previously been one of the biggest coke-heads around. He was open about his experiences and I had several great conversations about his lifestyle: the before, during, and after.

He had some fantastic stories and with the knowledge that he was in a good place in his life when I knew him, we were able to laugh in amazement at them. From all of his stories, the thing that I remember the most from our conversations is when he told me that while he was on drugs, he thought that 90 percent of the world lived the way he did.

Scotty believed that most people went out, partied, did drugs and sometimes got a little out of control. Sure, maybe about 10 percent of the population were boring people who stayed at home on weekends and went to church on Sunday. As his friends gradually dropped out of the party scene, he thought they were all losers who couldn’t handle it anymore. Until he was the only one.

He told me that he finally went to rehab at the bequest of his wife who must have been one of those boring people that couldn’t handle partying anymore. He went as a matter of appeasement, not seriously believing that he had a problem. It wasn’t until it took him two full appointments just to fill out the application at the rehab center when he realized the extent to which his drug use was abnormal. From that point, he cleaned himself up and he and his wife started a family.

While Scotty was one of the last of the people in his friend group to clean himself up, I’ve been thinking what his mindset was as his drug buddies gradually faded away. How dare you shun the party lifestyle! The people involved might say that they are mad at losing the company of a friend. However, when a person leaves a situation to improve themselves, those left behind are annoyed at what is seen as an indictment on their way of living…the presumption, the arrogance.

I hope that no one reading my writing is thinking How dare you shun the grieving parent lifestyle! However, I have fielded comments along the lines of “I couldn’t do that. My situation is different.”

Of course it is.

That said, I am just here writing about what I have done to feel better in my day to day life. I have always been about trial and error.

Growing up, I had a difficult time fitting in. As an adult, I am a lot better about it, though with my neuroticism, I probably put more thought into social missteps than those around me. Only recently have I come to realize that a large part of the reason I am comfortable with myself as an adult was because of my experimenting with ways of behaving.

A large part of what I do has been as a result of my willingness to try new things and see how they changed my environment. That certainly wasn’t a recipe for fitting in during middle school. At least not until I started to find things that worked. While I wasn’t explicitly thinking that way, that was essentially what I was doing most of my childhood and into my adulthood.

My life has been a series of experiments to try to get the results I desire in my life, both externally and internally. When Lucas died, the process was put to the test. My writing is the documentation of those experiments. Some things, like listening to the same angst-filled songs over and over or popping a Ritalin or two, were not successful in improving my situation. Other things, like writing, exercise, and opening myself up to others, did improve my mental health. What worked for me may not work for others. It is up to the individual person to find out what brings about positive change for them.

In my mind, that’s how 90 percent of the people in this world live their lives, but I could be wrong.

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Then my son Lucas died.

After that, I was a broken person. I did not give a fuck about my health, future, or pretty much anything. I had to rebuild just to get back to the baseline where most people are. In addition, I was also able to reorganize my priorities in a manner that helped me declutter my life and find a lot more balance. I’m glad I did the work, but it bothers me that Lucas’s death was the catalyst for action.

Over the past few months I’ve become acquainted with a term that’s new to me: Post-traumatic growth. This is a theory developed in the 1990s that says people who have endured psychological trauma can experience growth. They feel “a new appreciation for life, a newfound sense of personal strength and a new focus on helping others.”

According to the American Psychological Association, Post-traumatic growth occurs when a person goes through distress and confusion after they have a terrible event happen to them. In order to determine whether a person has achieved growth after trauma, they are evaluated in five areas: appreciation of life, relationships with others, new possibilities in life, personal strength, and spiritual change. Looking at how I have grown in four out of the five of the items on this inventory, it is clear to me that I have experienced PTG.

While it’s better than post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), I still don’t want it. I hate that it took my son’s death before I seriously began to work on myself. I was doing the things that middle-aged people do: examining habits around sleep, diet, exercise, drinking while picking up a meditation habit. You know, the sorts of things that adults do when they see their parents starting to slip and decide that upon self-reflection, they want something better when they’re older. I never quite got to the cold plunge stage, but I was taking care of myself. I was questioning my work-life balance and my relationships with my kids and loved ones. I was listening to podcasts and reading books regarding physical and mental health. I was doing all of that, but not seriously. I was casually dipping my toes into the pond of self-improvement.

I have to ask myself: Why is it that I wasn’t doing more before Lucas died? Why did it take the anguish and self-loathing to make major changes? I could have been doing more. I could have been working harder to be a better parent, a better teacher, a better person.

It’s not natural to maintain the motivation to create change in your life. Not the kind of change that is meaningful and lasts. In most cases, to have this kind of change, you need to destroy who you were before you can build the new you. But not in every case.

If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you are grieving the loss of someone close to you. You may be looking for companionship and understanding from a person who has also lost someone to know that you are not alone. You may be reading this for a sense of community or because you are looking for advice from someone who has gone through the death of a loved one. Maybe it’s because you know me or knew Lucas.

If, by some chance, you are reading this and you are living your life without having undergone a tragic event, if you are living your life having only experienced the ordinary day to day struggles that most people go through, then this is your chance.

I try to imagine examining my life more consistently, improving my teaching to become a more empathetic teacher, and being more at peace with accepting life as it comes. But I don’t see how it would have happened to the degree it did without Lucas’s death. I feel like it did take destroying the old me before I could fully commit to being a better person. Hopefully, some of you can figure out how to make these changes without experiencing the tragedy. If you do, let me know how you did it.

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Last summer felt like there was still a cloud over everything. Some good friends of mine here were struggling financially which was causing them mental health issues. My dad’s declining physical and mental health along with his refusal to change his living situation was concerning. My daughter Tia announced that she wasn’t going back to school which left some serious questions about where she was going to live and how she was going to support herself. To top it off, she didn’t seem interested in my suggestions for what actions she needed to do to rectify that situation.

This year has been much improved. My friends are also doing better with one of them taking a steady job and another building his business back up after a few setbacks. My dad is in a great assisted living situation which he has settled into. While saying that he enjoys it might be a stretch, he at least seems to have accepted it. Tia was able to get into a great living situation at the end of last summer with my assistance. After a month or two, she had a job that paid well. Now she’s thriving and planning on going back to school for the Fall Semester.

Years ago, the prospect of flying to Wisconsin to see friends was pure excitement. I would leave on the first flight Friday evening of the last day of school and fly back to Taipei the day before I had to start work to take advantage of a full sixty days. I used to pack my schedule with as many meet-ups and activities as possible. If I was sitting at my parents’ place with no plans, I got restless. It was exhausting. Now I wonder if six weeks is too much.

Even before Lucas died, I started pruning the list of people that I would meet up with. Some of them, like my college roommate and his family, I genuinely enjoyed hanging out with. They were delightful and my family got along with them fantastically. I just had to accept that constantly being on the move was turning my time off into a series of obligations.

Then Covid-19 hit and I didn’t come to Wisconsin for two years. When I eventually returned, not only did I not see friends during my time away, I was much more withdrawn after Lucas’s death. Coming back to the States a few weeks early, I was cautious in reaching out to friends. When Mina and Tia came out to join me, I got an AirBnB rather than stay with my mom so we could have some solitude.

The post-Lucas version of me hasn’t quite gotten used to seeing friends that I don’t talk to on a weekly or monthly basis. I appear the same on the outside, but I feel different. It could be aging, but most likely has something to do with how my values and priorities have changed.

Even this year, I declared that I wouldn’t be doing activities that I often do, not wanting to overschedule myself. However, as the summer has progressed and I’ve gotten the time to myself that I need, I have been saying yes to opportunities that I said I wouldn’t do. I have found that saying “no” and changing my mind is easier than saying “yes” and then backing out. I may even contact some people that I haven’t talked to in a while.

I am most definitely in the best place mentally than I have been since Lucas died. I would even go as far as saying that currently, I am in a better place than the year before he died. I may not be more open, but I am more comfortable with the people who I care about. I can feel myself pushing the boundaries.

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Dear 2021 Aaron,

I am so sorry for what happened to you. You experienced one of the worst things that could happen to a person, the loss of a child. I know that you are hurting right now. Wondering what you could have done differently. You are blaming yourself for not being more attentive to the signs. Lamenting the loss of the time you rightfully expected to have with Lucas. At this point, you can’t imagine feeling any differently.

I am here to assure you, your grief will soften. The process will be slow and it will take years. You will feel great at times and at others, you will feel just as bad as the day he died. There is no end point. With that reassurance, let me give you a guide as to how that will happen.

First of all, forgive yourself. You were a good father. Your friends who were witness to your interactions with Lucas know it. Lucas told his friends that he was glad to have you as a father. Even your own daughter has said it. As to what you could have done differently, there was no way of predicting what happened the night Lucas died. You have to trust that you did the best you could with the information that you had at the time.

Second, accept the support that people are offering you. You have good friends who want to help you. They want to be there to listen and to help you with tasks that seem burdensome right now. You know who you can rely on. Make sure that you let them know what they can do. In fact, some of them have already stepped into those roles without you having asked them to.

Third, though you may not be ready for it now, you need to open up to people again. Talking about Lucas openly seems like an impossible task. It seems like people don’t want to be burdened with hearing details of what happened or exactly how you feel. That’s not the case. Not only do people want to know for your sake, they have questions that they won’t ask for fear of how that will make you feel. They are grieving too. They are worried about their friend and coworker. As unfair as it may seem, they are relying on you to take the lead. Talking about Lucas openly will give the signal that the subject of his life is not taboo. There is freedom in talking fondly about your memories of him and allowing others to do the same.

You have a long road in front of you. Sometimes you will feel that the worst is over and then experience months of sadness afterwards. Eventually, your grief will soften into something manageable on a daily basis. You will also experience clarity about the aspects of your life that you care about and the ones that have no meaning to you. Cling to the ones that matter and discard the ones that you don’t value. There is freedom in that.

The main thing that I want to communicate is that you are going to be okay. It will get better. Please take care of yourself.

Regards,

2026 Aaron

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I had just gotten my dream part-time job, a food vendor selling hot dogs and soda in the seats at a professional baseball stadium, something I had wanted to do since attending baseball games as a kid. After the employee orientation, I picked up a female friend of mine and we hung out. Not a girlfriend, but I thought there was potential. I was on top of the world. After dropping her off, I headed home and about half a mile later totalled the car.

The other driver was at fault, having been speeding to make a yellow light. Having driven through that intersection dozens of times before, I had the timing of when the light would turn green down to a science. However, my lack of caution in an avoidable situation was enough for my parents to decide I wouldn’t be getting another car.

For the next year, I saw every problem through the lens of the one careless moment. The regret I felt over this overshadowed my life until I was able to get another car the summer before my sophomore year of college.

Years later as an adult, I was walking through the side gate at work when I was greeted by the upper school principal. Because I was a middle school teacher, he wasn’t directly in charge of me, but he was still an administrator at the school where I worked. I also taught his son. “Hey Aaron, you accidentally sent me an email about another child. I just wanted to let you know.”

I’d been caught out. I’d sent a similar message to the parents of several other children. In this case, I must have forgotten to change the name, a major faux pax. I wasn’t sure if making this mistake with an administrator’s child was better or worse than with another member of the community. Either way, it certainly wasn’t good. My mind began reeling with the possible consequences of this. The eventual fallout probably wouldn’t be terrible, but my mind began playing out the possibilities. It certainly put me in a worse mood than I already was in.

Fifteen minutes later I got the call from Mina telling me that Lucas was dead.

Later that day while in a room with the administrators at our school planning the messaging around Lucas’s death, I mentioned to the upper school principal how embarrassed I was over the error with the email. He told me not to worry about it and remarked on how Lucas’s death certainly puts smaller things like mistakes at work into perspective. He was not wrong about that.

It’s funny to think how what I thought of as a day starting out badly could get exponentially worse. What we consider bad will often, in the scheme of things, be forgotten a week from now.

When I was a teen-ager, totaling my car truly felt like the end of the world. The ramifications of crashing my car were certainly lingering, but not truly life-altering. As an adolescent, being given that freedom and then losing it through my own carelessness felt like the end of the world.

In hindsight, it could have been so much worse. The insurance paid for most of my car. I just wasn’t allowed to get another one. Most importantly, no one was hurt. As an adolescent, it’s hard to comprehend how truly life-altering the accident could have been if I had been a fraction of a second faster. The driver would have plowed into the driver’s side of my vehicle at high speed and crippled or killed me.

The mistake with the email felt awful at the time, but had it happened on any other day but the one that Lucas died, I probably wouldn’t even remember it.

I used to place so much importance on mistakes, catastrophizing them. During certain times of the day, I still do. I have been working on letting them go, to not let myself be consumed by the same regret or perceived wrong over and over.

I have to tell myself that it’s not the worst thing in the world.

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Last Sunday morning, I saw an email with four words in it, “Parenting is for suckers.”

I am 98% sure that the phrase was meant ironically. I’ll be damned if I can remember the context. The best I can do is to backtrack my thought process so I can attempt to piece together what I was likely thinking.

I have been on a kick regarding finding meaning through doing hard things recently. One of my pet peeves is the suggestion that people who choose to be parents are “sheep,” “gluttons for punishment,” “buying into the patriarchy,” or simply stupid.

The evidence is clear. New parents are sleep-deprived, missing the days when they could leave the house without packing a suitcase filled with baby supplies, or make plans without having to be mindful of a toddler’s sleep schedule. No matter how many social media posts we see regarding the rewards of seeing the smile of a child or watching them accomplish a milestone that any normal human being can do, we are not fooled. These heartfelt moments do not make up for the tantrums and the loss of freedom. Parenting small children sucks.

I recently had a friend with a small child marvel at how I chose to have kids 17 months apart. “So you just decided to double up on the misery?” Without wanting to verbally admit it, I realized that was exactly what my mentality was with the spacing of my children. I extolled the benefits of having children closer together (there are many) and how Mina and I managed by splitting up the duties, but in reality, that period of our lives did kind of suck. It sucked to the point where Mina sat in line at the local daycare overnight to get places for Lucas and Tia like she was in front of an Apple store trying to be the first to get the new iPhone. Then she had to take the first shitty job she could find to meet the minimum employment requirement. When I asked why she would do that, her response was a loving, “I can’t stand to be in the house all day with that kid!”

Are you still not convinced how awesome parenting is? Then when they get older, there is dragging the kids to sports practices, nagging them to do homework, the surly behavior, the expense of providing these things, and the worry. Even anticipating the end of one anxiety-inducing stage only brings about more worries about how their lives could go catastrophically wrong. Parenting is hard!

Remember when I said that I’m on a kick of finding meaning through doing hard things?

Parenting is one of the most meaningful pursuits that a person could undertake. It may not be the most meaningful pursuit, but it is high on the list. It is also one of the more easily accessible things that a person could do which is why so many people choose to become parents.

There is meaning in being responsible for another person and guiding their experiences and expectations in life. In being the person that they look up to. In being their world. Words don’t do this justice, which is why childless couples get so sick of hearing this as a reason for why parents choose to have kids.

I have heard childless teachers say that they get their meaning through being a part of their students’ lives. That may be true, but if you are one of those people, don’t think for a second you’re getting the full package.

I cannot properly express all of the joy that my kids have given me throughout the years. I consistently tell people that from the ages of 7 to 13 are the golden years. If you have time-consuming goals that you want to accomplish outside of parenting, work your life around accomplishing them when your kids are outside that age range. You’ll want to focus your full energy on the time of their life when your kids are actually fun, independent, and want to spend their time with you. I was lucky. I got a few years past 13.

Certainly, the friction between parents and children can be miserable. Yet, that friction is a feature, not a bug and overcoming it can lead to deeper connections. As moody and difficult to be around Lucas was towards the end of his life, we were on our way to a strong relationship. Even his friends told me how much he valued mine and Mina’s parenting.

Parenting can cause immense suffering. Losing Lucas was The. Most. Painful.thing I have experienced in my life. Yet, I would never trade the time I had with him away to avoid that pain. The amount a person values something is proportional to the potential grief over losing it. The anguish I faced after Lucas’s death was so immense because I valued my relationship with him so highly.

I want to be clear, I am not shitting on those who choose to not have kids. People have very good reasons for not wanting to make the sacrifices that come with parenting. A person deciding that they don’t have the temperament or means to be a good parent is a choice that takes some serious introspection. Some people devote their energy to other meaningful pursuits and recognize that having a child will take time and energy away from their other goals.

That said, stop with the notion that parenting is for suckers.

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I am equating the word “suffer” with the word “struggle” which may be a false equivalency. To suffer means to have discomfort needlessly. To struggle means to have discomfort and to grow from it which is a worthwhile pursuit. In my experience not everyone agrees with even that idea.

So much of what I have seen recently from society is the expectation that we can avoid discomfort. We all want the feeling of happiness and pleasure without the contrast. Pleasure without meaning has a word: hedonism. The unbridled feeling of constant pleasure without having earned it or any kind of meaning attached to it.

I think back to my childhood and the struggles that I endured, incidents which I would have avoided given the choice. Looking back, I am glad for those challenges as they taught me self-reliance and the ability to solve my problems.

Thinking of conveniences available to younger generations today, there is an epidemic of middle school, high school, and even college students using AI to write essays for class. As an adolescent or young adult, why would a person deliberately put themselves through the time and effort to develop a skill that they don’t see the value of? As a middle aged adult, I could make an argument for ethics, but if I’m being entirely honest, given the availability of AI when I was younger, I probably would have taken the easy way out.

It’s a matter of adults having the personal experience to say that the act of writing an essay teaches a person the feeling of accomplishment at having developed a skill. The act of writing an essay forces a person to contemplate a topic in a manner that they wouldn’t have otherwise. The struggle created through writing an essay teaches introspection and a sense of meaning.

Expecting an adolescent to do the right thing out of a sense of duty is total bullshit. Several years ago, our school hosted an expert in adolescent decision making. This man, Scott Poland, described research detailing how middle school students have poor risk/reward processing and can’t plan for more than 12 hours in the future. Under those circumstances, how on earth are we expecting them to do the right thing or avoid the easy way out? How can we expect students to value the act of writing for its own sake?

I am so glad that we didn’t have access to AI when I was a child. While I can’t say that the physical bullying I endured in fifth grade was character-building, I can think of other struggles that did help me develop and grow as a person. I learned conflict resolution in dealing with peers and the value of pushing myself to attain a goal in physical education class. We want to support kids and give them the tools to manage their problems, not eliminate them entirely or solve problems for them.

Another challenge that young adults are increasingly avoiding through the use of social media is the awkwardness of meeting new people. Any time more conflict than a person is comfortable with arises, they can label the person as toxic and then ghost them. Friction among friends is what helps us to develop stronger ties. Avoiding all friction creates unrealistic expectations around how others should act around us.

The sooner that adolescents realize that the world does not owe them happiness and that there will be discomfort and struggle, the sooner that they can get accustomed to the idea that struggle is good for them. Struggle creates growth.

Adolescents and young adults aren’t alone in this. Given the option to have Lucas back without having experienced the growth associated with rebuilding my life, I would choose to have him back in a heartbeat. That said, I don’t have that choice. I am not happy about his death, but I am happy at being a kinder, more empathetic friend and teacher.

If I, as an adult who recognizes the value in struggle, would choose the easier path, how on earth can we expect a twelve-year-old to take the harder path? Yes, the difference is that I didn’t have a choice in the matter, but let’s say that I did. Even I, the person who wakes up at 4:00 in the morning to go cycling, would take comfort over growth.

I didn’t get to be the type of person that I am by avoiding hard things. I also didn’t get there spontaneously. I got there because the adults in my life didn’t give me a choice. They took away privileges. They took away the easy option. Then little by little introduced the choices and allowed me to see the rewards for taking the harder path.

I tell my students an anecdote of how I used to hate the thought of having to do essay tests throughout high school and how I relished the idea of graduating high school and not having to produce timed writing anymore. One day it occurred to me that the frequency of doing writing-based tests was only going to increase in college. After a momentary feeling of dread at an inevitable fate, I realised that the solution was to practice writing under pressure so that I no longer hated it. The timed essay writings became a skill I developed and actually enjoyed.

I use this story to convince my students that the best solution to Math anxiety is to practice it and get good at it. The kids who hate math tend to be the ones who lack the basic skills. The students who lack the basic skills are the ones who don’t practice. I tell them that if they practice, they will get better and no longer dread it.

Where does this leave us? We as the adults in the room need to remove the technology that provides the easy path. We need to give opportunities for students to struggle and then celebrate the small victories. We need to have children experience firsthand the feeling of accomplishment that comes from the struggle and well-earned rewards. Through recognizing a history of past successes, adolescents can gradually build the resilience to seek out struggle.

While we may want an end to suffering, we certainly want to welcome struggle into our lives.

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Three years ago, I was the guy whose son had died. Most people didn’t know how to be around me. Even I didn’t know how to be around me as I was unsure of how I wanted people to act. I don’t think I made it easy for others.

Many people let their careers, significant others or children define them. If you’re a parent, you know what I’m talking about. “Oh, are you Johnny’s dad? It’s nice to finally meet you!”

I don’t even have that with Lucas anymore. I am defined by who I used to be a parent of. Much like some of my friends are parents of high school students, children who used to be middle school students. I am a parent of a dead child, one that used to be alive.

I have spent the past five years thinking that Lucas’s death has been who I am. For a while, that was what I felt was my biggest identity marker. It has been incredibly hard to get away from. While I don’t know that other people think of me that way, I certainly do.

For a while, that’s the only way I could think of myself. Lucas’s death certainly occupied the majority of my attention. I couldn’t imagine how it wasn’t written all over my face, across my forehead, “parent of a dead child.” I can’t even say that I didn’t like it. I felt like a martyr.

I imagined people saying, “Oh look at poor Aaron! His son died, you know.” When I met a person who didn’t know my sad personal history, I felt cheated, like a D-list celebrity offering an autograph that no one wants. I wanted to say to them, “You mean you didn’t know what a tragic figure I am!?”

About a year ago, I started a board game meet-up at my place. Most of the people in this group arrived after Lucas died. With Lucas being such a big part of my board game experience, I’m fairly certain that I have told each of them about his death at some point. With that in mind, I doubt that he is in the forefront of their minds when they see me. There is a great relief to that.

My interactions with new people have helped me to realize that most people don’t see me as “dead kid guy.” They may think of me as the board game guy or the math teacher. Maybe they think of me as the grumpy asshole. While close friends check in on me, most people probably see me in a different light from what I project on myself.

Thinking back to the faculty meeting last week, I almost apologized to Jenny for making her uncomfortable those years ago. Then I considered whether or not this was even something that was on her mind. She didchoose to sit at the same table as me, something I don’t think she would have done if she felt uncomfortable around me. Upon reflection, I have come to realize that I can choose how I define myself.

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My friend Mark had convinced his dad to drive us to the shopping mall a few miles away to watch the movie “Poltergeist 2.” We bought our tickets and decided to wander around the mall in the half-hour before the movie started. Up ahead, we saw three moderately popular girls from our school. They looked back, whispered something to each other, and laughed among themselves.

Mark froze. The phrase he muttered to himself the entire evening was, “I can’t believe they saw us together.”

Being the social climber, he was devastated at being seen with a dork like me. I was delighted at being seen with someone who hung out with the cool kids.

Forty years later, Mark is my oldest friend and the godfather to my two children. He has apologized so many times for the type of person he was at that point in our lives. We’ve been through a lot together.

I was twenty-one years old. I began working at a bar. Looking several years younger than I actually was, there was no way I was going to drink in a bar until the day I turned twenty-one. Bar culture was a new arena to figure out and I was always a slow learner when it came to social situations.

However, a woman named Katie came in one of the first weekends I worked. She was with friends and she was clearly at the end of her night out. She wasn’t sloppy, but boisterous and enjoying herself. Katie wasn’t a regular at the bar, but another part-time worker who often worked the door of the spy-themed bar we worked in. She was a few years older but for some reason, I wasn’t intimidated by that.

The next time I saw her, I got to chatting with her at a slow time while she was at the door, an isolated place where I could talk without feeling the prying eyes of others on me. Something about her disarmed me. For some reason, she didn’t realize I was awkward and self-conscious. I asked her out to dinner and she accepted. I didn’t even have a car so Katie picked me up at my college apartment and took me to a divey, out of the way Mexican restaurant. Maybe because it was out of the way.

As we sat down, two coworkers of ours walked past us. One of them was an ex-boyfriend of hers. We said hi as they left. She said, “I can’t believe they saw us together.”

This time, I had more self respect than when I was twelve. After the third time she said it, I said, “Maybe you should take me home.”

She caught herself, apologized, and we had an enjoyable time together. We dated for a few months. For the first month, we snuck around without letting people know that we were dating. I didn’t quite have enough self-confidence to confront her on that. We would finish our bar shifts at 2:30 am and she would “give me a ride home” even though everyone knew that we lived in opposite directions.

I thought she was ashamed of me. In hindsight, I now realize that due to our age difference she was afraid of being perceived as an older woman preying on younger men. The term “cougar” hadn’t been introduced to popular lexicon, yet.

I eventually told her that while we didn’t need to make a formal announcement, people weren’t stupid. Our coworkers already knew and I was tired of going out of our way to pretend like we weren’t dating. She agreed and nothing earth-shaking happened when we openly talked like a couple.

Katie was my first serious girlfriend. She attended my wedding. She gave me real-estate advice. I hang out with her and her husband when I go back to the U.S. She lives near my daughter and takes her out to lunch sometimes. My wife and daughter both know she is an ex-girlfriend. My wife asks me if that is normal and I tell her, “No, it’s weird.”

I was thirty years old living in Japan and had a regular mountain-biking group. A new guy named Paul started riding with us. Based on his body language, he didn’t seem to like me but I shrugged it off. We had a few nights out drinking and he seemed to warm up to me.

A few years later, another guy joined our group, gave Paul a look and said, “What’s up with this guy?” Paul told him, “don’t worry, you’ll get used to him.” This sparked a conversation amongst our current riding group regarding each of their first few interactions with me and the negative impressions they had. I laughed along and it genuinely didn’t bother me.

Years later at a leaving ceremony at work, all the people who were leaving got a speech and a plaque from one of the faculty who were staying. Paul gave my speech and there were unconfirmed reports of him tearing up.

Since then, he has visited me in Taipei, and I have stayed with him in Maccao and Japan. We’re still great friends.

The school I currently work for has an annual golf tournament. My first year, I didn’t know anyone who was interested or wasn’t already in their own group so I got put in a random foursome. I knew two people but didn’t know one of the members at all. He included me in an email chain that seemed to have been going on for a while. My guess was that he hadn’t carefully read the emails that the other two had been sending over the past several days. There were some disparaging remarks towards me and the prospect of having to tolerate my presence for a round of golf. After I was included in the email chain, it became clear that I had read the comments.

I felt down for a few days and considered canceling my participation in the event. Yet, at the age of 42, I could no longer walk away from remarks like this. Even my wife made a comment of how she was in disbelief as to how I have the fortitude to still put myself in a position where I will be in close contact with these people all day.

As a reply to the email, I made a gentle joke regarding his remarks. He made a joke back. We went to the event and by the end of the day we were friends.

Why these stories?

When I was younger, my responses to negativity were out of low self-worth. However, I stuck things out and in the end found long-lasting, loyal friendships. Eventually, I began to realize that consistent contact breeds familiarity, which breeds friendships. I learned to have patience to eventually develop that connection.

Clearly, I am an acquired taste. I have been told that’s the asshole’s mantra. I really don’t know what it is that makes people take an initial dislike to me and then grow to develop deep, long-lasting friendships. I have about a dozen of these stories.

I have never been one for the initial social niceties that people do when they first meet. This is partly out of defiance and partly out of inability. I just don’t have the patience to behave in an unnatural manner. Acting towards another without the polished niceties can be jarring to others when they first meet a person. People don’t like being treated with the familiarity of an old friend by a new person. At the age of 52, I may have finally gotten to the point where I have learned to tone it down. Maybe.

If I ever find myself in a completely new situation where I don’t know anyone, I should try that experiment. I’m willing to bet I would still rub people the wrong way as the new guy.

The biggest point I am trying to make is that I believe that these close friendships of mine aren’t despite the initial friction, they’re because of that friction.

We as a society are losing the ability to form deep friendships. Who wants to deal with someone you find annoying when you can easily find plenty of other people in another chat group? Recently, people have a much lower tolerance to that social friction than what I grew up with when I had to get along with the same ten kids in my neighborhood.

As I have grown older, I still care what others think, but I have a proven track record of having built long-lasting friendships. I still slip up, but I know that time will help me to weather the storm.

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Over the past month, I have been publishing vignettes of my childhood. As a member of Gen-X, these stories are naturally fraught with being on my own a lot and having to solve my own problems. They have themes of feeling like I wasn’t good enough or of building resilience through resolving conflicts in my life.

I wanted to accompany the stories with photos and it seemed to be a natural use for Chat GPT. I deplore the idea of using generative AI to write or even edit my writing. I even refuse to use Grammarly.

Giving a visual depiction of the stories seemed like an acceptable reason to delve into this world. I have never tried to create photos using Chat GPT, and had heard that I need to carefully craft my description to not only get the desired result, but to also make sure that I don’t violate any guardrails.

The first story was about a crush I had on a neighborhood girl the summer before I was in second grade. I was cautious in my phrasing about this and gave the following prompt:

“create a sweet picture of a six-year-old boy kissing a six-year old girl on the cheek”

I wasn’t completely surprised when I received the response of:

“We’re so sorry, but the prompt may violate our content policies. If you think we got it wrong, please retry or edit your prompt.”

I saw that this was likely going to be a losing battle so I settled for,

“create a picture of a six-year old boy and girl holding hands”

and AI created the following photo:

For my second story, I described a conflict that I had with another boy in third grade which resulted in threats of violence against me. I knew that this was likely to be fraught with controversy and was not optimistic when I put in the following prompt:

“please give an image of two eight-year old boys on a playground. one looks really tough and angry. the other is scared”

Chat GPT had no issues producing the following image. Apart from the darkly surreal look about it, it is somewhat similar to what I wanted. I don’t personally know many eight-year-old boys that wear chains, but that could just be my social circle. I was just glad that it produced anything close so accepted it as is.

My next story was about conflict with my fourth grade teacher and anxiety over a timed Math quiz. I attempted to recreate that with the following prompt:

“please give an image of a nine year old boy struggling with a math test while a mean female teacher in in her 60’s looks over his shoulder”

I received the following response:

“We’re so sorry, but the image we created may violate our guardrails around acceptable depictions of teens and children. If you think we got it wrong, please retry or edit your prompt”

I changed the word “mean” to “stern” and got this image.

Up until this point, I understood why Chat GPT might have issues with what I was requesting. I had asked for a child kissing another child, a child intimidating another child (the only of my prompts to this point that produced a picture on the first try), and a teacher intimidating a student.

For my story about being bullied on the school bus in fifth grade, I wanted to be cautious. Resistance to the next prompt genuinely surprised me.

“please give me an image of a 10 year-old boy waiting for the approaching school bus in the winter in a snowy suburban neighborhood”

got the standard response of:

“We’re so sorry, but the image we created may violate our guardrails around acceptable depictions of teens and children. If you think we got it wrong, please retry or edit your prompt.”

I was genuinely confused so instructed:

“please explain why that is a violation of your guardrails.”

The response was to just repeat the previous explanation around guardrails. I was able to get the following photo, but in order to do that, I had to write:

“can you create a similar image to the boy waiting for the school bus that is within your guidelines”

My next story involved overcoming my feelings of physical inadequacy through determination and believing in myself while trying to hit the benchmarks for the Presidential Fitness Award in sixth grade. For the photo, I gave the following prompt:

“Please give me a picture of a scrawny eleven year old boy struggling to do pull-ups while a 50-year-old female physical education teacher is in the background encouraging him.”

I realized that Chat GPT doesn’t know what a pull-up is when I got this hilarious photo:

I then tried to describe what a pull-up was with the following prompt.

“please put both arms on the same side of the pull-up bar facing the same way”

This was rejected with the standard response about guardrails surrounding children. When I gave this prompt:

“please have the boy doing standard pull-ups”

I just got a different version of Chat GPT’s messed-up idea of what a pull-up is.

It wasn’t until I found a photo of a person doing a pull-up and told AI to emulate the position of the person that I got this.

The boy in the picture is a little more determined and athletic than I pictured my 11-year-old self looking, but I was just glad that he was doing an actual pull-up.

For my story involving a rift with a friend in seventh grade, I wanted a photo that captured us delivering newspapers together so I gave this prompt:

“Please give me a picture of two 12 year old boys delivering newspapers on a summer day”

I had no problems with the prompt, but had to suggest a couple of edits regarding making one of the boys shorter and not looking identical to each other. The eventual photo was this.

My next story was about asking out a girl in seventh grade. Based on my previous experience with getting shut down for violating guidelines, I assumed that I would have an enormous amount of trouble. I tried to be as diplomatic as possible, but wanted to capture the scene in its entirety so gave the following prompt:

“please give me a photo of an awkward looking 12-year-old boy asking out an awkward looking 12 -year-old girl while a group of cool looking kids looks on while whispering and laughing”

To its credit, Chat GPT got the spirit of what I was asking for. After describing the girl as “unhappy” in my edit, I got the following response and picture:

“I can create a scene that captures that awkward, nervous moment, but I’ll keep it respectful (no mean-spirited or humiliating portrayal of kids).

Here’s an image along those lines:”

For my story of having to do a square-dancing unit in Physical Education class in eighth grade, I was once again expecting trouble with this prompt.

“Please give me a picture of an awkward, short 13 year old boy square dancing with a tall, attractive thirteen year old girl in a physical education class. please generate a photo that does not violate your guidelines”

Once again, I received little to no pushback and through a combination of having to enter a picture of square dancing and describe the girl as “serious” I got this photo.

Due to the nature of my final story from eighth grade about me confronting someone who had pushed me aside, I figured that I might need to have a few tries before I got a photo. I had no idea that it would be so difficult. My first try of:

“please create an image of a large, overweight 12-year-old boy drinking from a drinking fountain while a scrawny 13-year-old boy stands behind him. please generate a photo that does not violate your guidelines.”

Got the standard message regarding guardrails around depictions of teens and children:

“We’re so sorry, but the image we created may violate our guardrails around acceptable depictions of teens and children. If you think we got it wrong, please retry or edit your prompt.”

I then replaced the word “overweight” with “large” and the word “scrawny” with “smaller” and got the same message. I input a picture as a model and said to make the boys 12 and 13 and got the same message. I prompted:

“Please create a picture of a large 12-year old boy drinking from a drinking fountain”

Same response. I prompted:

“Please create a picture of a 12-year old boy drinking from a drinking fountain while another boy patiently waits in the background”

Again, no. Finally, I asked a one-word question,

“Why?”

Unlike the situation when I asked about this regarding the bus stop photo, I was finally given one of the most coherent explanations of what had been happening.

“Your request itself is not inherently inappropriate. A simple scene of one child using a drinking fountain while another waits should normally be allowed.

What’s likely happening is that the image safety system is being overly cautious because several earlier requests in the conversation involved:

• children in emotionally negative or socially tense situations,

• descriptions emphasizing body size differences,

• humiliation/awkwardness themes,

• confrontation or anger between minors.

When combined across a conversation, the automated filter can sometimes incorrectly flag later child-focused image requests—even harmless ones like waiting at a drinking fountain.

A safer way to phrase it is to keep the scene neutral and everyday, for example:

“A realistic photo of two middle school boys in a school hallway near a drinking fountain. One boy is taking a drink while the other waits casually nearby. Bright school lighting, friendly atmosphere, candid photography style.”

That framing avoids:

• emphasizing body type,

• conflict,

• intimidation,

• embarrassment,

• or emotional distress involving minors.”

Eventually, I realized that simply starting a new chat would reset the guardrails and I was able to produce this picture.

So what did I learn?

Essentially, the cumulative effect of asking generative AI to produce photos of a relatively normal, trauma-free Gen-X childhood is unacceptable by today’s standards. Look, I understand that I was focusing on some of the more negative aspects of what I had to deal with. I am still mystified about how waiting for a school bus in winter or a child doing pull-ups while being encouraged by a teacher was too much.

I understand that loaded words about body type triggered guardrails, but I’m fairly certain that not a week of my childhood went by without me hearing the words, scrawny, skinny, short, or tiny with reference to my body. I understand how photos showing “conflict, intimidation, embarrassment, or emotional distress” may be triggering.

(As a caveat here, I know that the main purpose of the guardrails around children is to prevent the creation of photos that provoke a response in certain predatory adults. If you feel that this nullifies my whole argument, then so be it. It is possible or even likely that I am underestimating the number of adults who may abuse the creation of this type of photo for nefarious purposes. I certainly don’t want to argue against child safety. If we can accept that this is not the only reason for these guardrails, I will continue my reasoning.)

However, what this tells me is that the things that I went through as a child are not acceptable by today’s standards. Certainly we want to minimize bullying and physical altercations. Yet the point of all of these stories is how these incidents helped me to grow as a person. These incidents taught me conflict resolution, resilience, perseverence, standing up for myself, among other lessons. I feel like society is trying to eliminate all conflict and consequences from the lives of children which is doing them a disservice.

Eventually, children grow into adults that will have to face the realities of life without helicopter parents or even snowplow parents swooping in to save the day. The sooner that we can teach them to resolve conflicts or to hold them accountable for their actions in a low-stakes environment, the better.

Looking back at my childhood and these stories in particular, I am happy to be the person that my upbringing helped me to develop into. I’m proud to be a member of Gen-X whether or not my childhood violates Chat GPT’s guardrails.

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I observed. I made friendships with a variety of people who were fine with me one on one but embarrassed to be seen with me in public. I tolerated it because I was glad for the friendship, as lopsided as it was. I grew. I realized that I was a worthwhile person and didn’t have to put up with people treating me poorly.

The end of eighth grade I started to hit my breaking point. I knew I was moving to a different part of town. As my self-confidence grew, I decided that I did not need to put up with anyone else’s bullshit.

When I was in my second half of eighth grade, I’d had enough. I wasn’t necessarily bullied, but I certainly wasn’t a member of the “in” group of kids. Among a few of the more popular kids (i.e. mean and scary), I got picked on for things like my shoes, the way I talked, usual middle school stuff, but it was all low-level teasing.

One instance of this didn’t even come from anyone in my grade and it wasn’t from someone who anyone would have considered popular. Jason N. was in seventh grade and was a big kid who wasn’t all that well-liked. I think he was just another kid on the fringes who was fighting for status.

One day during break, I was waiting in line for my turn for a drink from the drinking fountain (“bubbler” as it is called in southeast Wisconsin). I was next in line, but Jason pushed me aside and began to drink. That’s not something I would tolerate from anyone, but I certainly wasn’t going to take that from the likes of him. I pushed his face into the water stream while he was drinking. To me, that ended it.

He certainly wasn’t going to take that from the likes of me so he straightened up and slapped me. It wasn’t even that hard, but the shock of what he had just done ran through me to the point where I was stunned in disbelief.

My blood began to boil. I knew that this was a defining point regarding who I was and who I wanted to be. Was I going to be a doormat all my life and let people treat me badly, or was I going to stand up for myself? I doubt that I had such far-thinking thoughts running through my head at that point, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let a loser like Jason swat at me like I didn’t matter.

Not many people were around to see the slap so there wasn’t a huge amount of humiliation attached with it. In hindsight, that must have made the following events all that more shocking. After a few seconds to process what had happened, I followed Jason into the crowded hallway where a large number of students were lined up to get into the classrooms. With my heart hammering, I said, “Hey Jason!” and when he turned, I punched him in the face.

He immediately cried out, put his hands to his face, and collapsed to the floor amid the stunned looks of everyone in the halls. I turned, walked to my classroom, and sat down for class. A few minutes later, the teacher began class, oblivious to what had just happened.

About 15 minutes into class, the office called via the intercom asking Ms. Petryka to send me down to the office. While she had no idea why I was being sent to the office, every student knew. All eyes were on me as I struggled to contain my smile while I stood up and left the class for the walk to the principal’s office.

I knew I was in trouble. I also knew that no matter what happened in the principal’s office, my social status had just elevated more in the past half an hour than the entire previous seven years combined. Jason was not a well-liked kid. There was not going to be any retribution from friends. He was not a kid who was necessarily tough, a fact even I knew when I decided to confront him. It was a calculated risk to punch him in the face in front of everyone. Even with that decision made in the heat of the moment, I could not have imagined the scene going better than it had. Little me flooring big Jason with one punch in front of everyone.

Entering the office, our principal asked me to sit down. I calmly complied, awaiting whatever dressing down and punishment I had coming to me. The majority of my time at St. Alphonsus, I had been a relatively good kid. Apart from the occasional misbehavior due to my hyperactive nature, I wasn’t a troublemaker.

Miss Kress, the principal, began by telling me how what I did was dangerous and how what I did could have caused serious injury. She went on to explain how I was lucky that I hadn’t chipped Jason’s tooth when I pushed his face into the bubbler. At that point it occurred to me she didn’t even know that I had punched him in the face. I suddenly felt cheated. I had stood up to a bully and she thought all I had done was push his face into the bubbler?

My need to correct her was overwhelming. “Jason didn’t hurt his mouth from the bubbler. He hurt it when I punched him,” I corrected matter-of-factly, barely containing my glee at the sound of myself saying it out loud.

This got the desired effect. Miss Kress had clearly been ready to discipline for thoughtless horseplay resulting in injury and was wholly unprepared to discuss physical assault. This was a big deal. In most schools, fighting in school may have been more commonplace, but ours was a Catholic private school in a well-to-do community. Fights didn’t happen in our school and I had just proudly admitted to punching another student in the face.

I gave details of the exchange which must have given her the justification to not suspend me. There was a threat to keep me off the eighth grade trip to an amusement park, but no other real consequence. I’m trying to remember, but I don’t recall so much as a call home. Not even a writing punishment such as, “Write ‘I will not punch other students in the mouth.’ one-hundred times.”

Thinking back, I wonder why I didn’t just shut up about it. No teacher needed to know. Part of my reaction no doubt came from surprise that Jason hadn’t tattled. He had been injured and told about the bubbler, but not about the punch. Was he doing the honorable thing by keeping quiet? Or was he embarrassed at the prospect of being punched by the likes of me? As for me, I wanted to scream from the rooftops, “I stood up to a bully and won! Don’t mess with me!”

I’ve also wondered what the incident did to Jason. Did it make him nicer? Did it make him meaner? If even a small kid like me is willing to stand up to you, there wasn’t a lot of hope of pushing anyone else around. I was out of there a few months later. Not only did I graduate from the school, my family moved to an entirely different community where I got a fresh start.

Through the next several months, I learned that it’s hard to change who you are at heart or how people perceive you, but with a fresh start, you can make sure that you’re not the kid who gets pushed around.

Click on the following to read about:

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

Grade 6

Early Grade 7

End of Grade 7

Beginning of Grade 8

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While digging around in some old files, I found a series of old vignettes about my school experiences from grades 2 through 8, at least one from each year. I wrote these a few years before Lucas died and while these aren’t directly related to the loss of Lucas, they have helped provide me with some insight as to what kind of person can come back from the loss of a son.

In some ways, these are more personal than anything else I have published. Sharing thoughts on the death of a child is one thing. People expect you to be a mess. Publishing about the embarrassments of childhood? That’s an entirely different animal.

Apart from obvious spelling and grammatical errors, I have kept them as they were when I wrote them. Also, I have removed last names or changed them in some cases.

Click on the following to read about:

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

Grade 6

Early Grade 7

End of Grade 7

By eighth grade, I was becoming more comfortable with who I was. I found a rhythm in my academics, I was starting to find some success in athletic endeavors, and I was more comfortable in social situations. I still had a ways to go, but sense of self-worth was on the rise.

Back in my grade school days when Physical Education was called Gym class, we had a couple of dancing units. The first that I remember was Irish step dancing. I worked especially hard to do that dance which, thankfully, we didn’t have to perform in front of anyone. The only people who witnessed it were my teacher and the other students in the class. I think we were all embarrassed enough to never speak of it again. What happens in middle school Irish step dance class, stays in middle school Irish step dance class.

The dance that sticks out in my mind the most is square dancing. When I was in eighth grade, we were informed that we would be pairing up with someone of the opposite gender to do our square dancing unit. Jimmy Carter had declared square dancing as the United States national dance a few years prior, so it was our patriotic duty to learn the national dance.

I was at the age where I was secretly glad that I had forced physical contact with a girl, but not comfortable enough to admit it. We were allowed to choose partners which didn’t bode well for me. As one of the shortest and least popular boys, I didn’t have a lot going for me. Fortunately, as squirelly as I was, I had enough of a reputation for taking my grade seriously that I was able to score one of the hot-ticket girls as my partner.

I remember that it didn’t take a large amount of convincing to get Kristi M. to dance with me. If memory serves, most of the boys in my grade acted like jackasses as do eighth-grade boys in every school. I would imagine the announcement that we would have have to pair up with a member of the opposite sex was worse for the girls than it was for the boys. I’m not talking in a “ew, cooties” sort of way. I mean that the thought of having to learn a skill and then demonstrate it for a grade must have been worrisome for a lot of girls when many of the boys did not take dancing seriously enough.

As long as the girl in question was being pragmatic and looking for a good grade in the class rather than a boyfriend, I was probably a good choice. I know that I wasn’t a prize, but I must’ve had some modicum of sincerity about my request when asking her to be my partner. I imagine the conversation went something like this:

Me (asking one of the prettiest girls in the class out on a square dancing date in gym class): Do you want a dance partner who will be instrumental in you getting a good grade, or do you want the tall, good-looking guy over there making fart noises with his armpits?

Kristi (rolling her eyes and sighing): Fine, let’s get this over with.

With the little dexterity I had, I was able to learn the dance and perform in a satisfactory manner. I must have been able to demonstrate some form of coordination. I don’t do well in practical tests when the pressure is on. I’m guessing that our gym teacher gave us some sort of grade for effort, because I tried my hardest.

I was nervous even with the minimal contact. In addition, being one of the shortest boys in the class pairing up with one of the tallest girls in the class was probably as visually hilarious as I imagined it was. Still, I know that I was the envy of a lot of the boys and at least we weren’t one of the pairs of dance partners that were equally disgusted with each other. The respect that Kristi showed me gave me confidence in myself.

This was around the time that I began to develop some self-respect and to realize that I was actually a worthwhile person. It was my last year at that school and in that community. The next year, I moved and started high school with a fresh start. Dancing with Kristi was only a small part of my journey to my feelings of self worth, but it was one step of the way there.

Consider a paid membership to show me that my writing has meant something to you. Regardless of whether you get a paid subscription, I hope you will keep coming back. I will keep all content free regardless of whether you pay for a subscription. Thanks!

For $1 a month (Gold Tier Membership) click here.

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While digging around in some old files, I found a series of old vignettes about my school experiences from grades 2 through 8, at least one from each year. I wrote these a few years before Lucas died and while these aren’t directly related to the loss of Lucas, they have helped provide me with some insight as to what kind of person can come back from the loss of a son.

In some ways, these are more personal than anything else I have published. Sharing thoughts on the death of a child is one thing. People expect you to be a mess. Publishing about the embarrassments of childhood? That’s an entirely different animal.

Apart from obvious spelling and grammatical errors, I have kept them as they were when I wrote them. Also, I have removed last names or changed them in some cases.

Click on the following to read about:

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

Grade 6

Early Grade 7

This incident from the end of seventh grade has stuck with me as a reminder to be nicer to people who were even more socially awkward than me, both as a child and as an adult. I haven’t always been successful at being patient.

I wrote this vignette before Lucas died. The last line kills me.

As mentioned in previous stories, I was not a particularly popular or well-liked person. I wasn’t necessarily teased, but not many kids gave me a lot of thought. I had friends who were also on the fringe. Some seemed unconcerned about status and image while others were very image conscious. I would estimate that I was somewhere in the middle of that. One part of status that I never really gave consideration to was girls. I’m not sure why not. Maybe it was fun to tease them in an immature manner. Maybe it seemed like too much to bother. Maybe I didn’t consider myself cool enough where it was an option. In seventh grade I got a phone call and that changed.

It was a Friday or Saturday night. My mom and step-dad were out on a date so I was at home alone and probably watching TV. I got a call from some girl who passed along the information, “Jenny T. likes you.”

I don’t remember the details of the conversation. Over the phone, I could hear that there were other girls in the background. There might have been some resistance from me. The girl on the phone never told me who she was or how she came by this information. I may have asked who she was, but can’t be certain. I do know that she didn’t tell me who she was and since this was a decade before caller i.d. was even an option, I didn’t know who she was.

I was not attuned to the politics of who was popular among the girls and who wasn’t, but even I knew that Jenny was not part of the popular group of kids. That’s what made this piece of information somewhat believable. I had little to no contact with Jenny, but suddenly the possibility that a member of the opposite sex liked me stoked my low self esteem to the point that I was elated.

I really had no idea how I should proceed. There was no way that I would be able to just walk up to her in school and ask her out. What would I ask her to do and how would I arrange it? I did the natural next step. I looked up where she lived and rode my bike past her house in the hopes of catching her eye. It’s doubtful that she happened to be looking out of her window at exactly the multiple moments that I rode by. Even if she had, what possible outcome was I hoping for?

When the indirect approach was not successful, I envisioned my next move. I would have to be more direct and ask her out. The possibility that there was a middle ground had not occurred to me. I could have sat next to her and started talking to her with my immeasurable charm. Instead, with the deadline of summer vacation looming, I decided to ask her out at recess. My hope of getting her alone was not likely. I saw her walking ahead of me headed back into school. As I sped up to ask her out, it became incredibly obvious that I had an audience.

Even to me, at that moment, it was clear that something was up. No one knew about my plan, yet it was clear that there were a number of people whispering and an abnormal amount of attention on me. There was nothing stopping me from aborting the mission or even trying another time when fewer people were watching. By that point, I had invested a large amount of emotional energy and planning into that moment. I wanted to believe that she really did like me so badly and knew that I was unlikely to muster the courage again. I have never been one to dismiss sunk costs so plowed ahead.

“Jenny, will you go out with me?” I asked with my voice likely cracking in the process. The response was predictable, “Ew gross!” followed by the laughter from all of those around me. Amidst the humiliation, I had no verbal response. I thought to myself, “You’re not exactly a prize yourself.”

While that would have been a snappy response which would have saved some face, it really would not have been an appropriate one. In one sense she was a victim as well. Sure, she could have been kinder about it, but she was an unwilling actor in performance for the benefit of the popular kids. All because some snotty popular girls thought it would be funny to trick the awkward boy into asking the awkward girl out.

I know now, and even knew then to a small extent, that it was so obviously done as a prank. All the warning signs were there. The phone call filled me with hope, but really who could have known at that point? The facts that Jenny never looked at me once or seemed to have any interest in me were a mere formality. It was the thirty seconds or so leading up to the act when I really chose to ignore the blaring klaxons screaming that the situation was a set-up.

In the end, the social cost was minimal. I already had little to lose. It was one of the last days of school and Jenny did not return to our school the following year. I’m assuming it had nothing to do with me, but you never know. By the time the new school year started, most people had forgotten.

Once while in a group of boys, one of the more clownish boys loudly asked, “Hey Aaron, do you remember when you asked out Jenny T. last year?” I felt the humiliation begin to flow back but was rescued by Doug J., one of the popular kids, (“likeable” popular, not “scary and mean” popular) who said, “Don’t be dumb. He did that as a joke.” That ended the topic and it was never brought up again. I’ll never know if Doug actually thought it was a joke, or if he just said that to help me out, but I’m eternally grateful. Despite the immediate humiliation, I never had to suffer any consequence.

In the end the most painful part of the experience was the feeling that I was so easily duped. The thought that I was scammed was the worst of it. The phone call with the giggling girls in the background. The fact that Jenny never looked in my direction. I don’t even know if we had any classes together that would have made “liking me” a possibility. The whispering and giggling as I walked up to ask her out. All of the signs were that this was a joke at my expense and I chose to ignore them. “How could I have been so dumb?” went through my mind over and over. I had the opportunity to make the right decision in the heat of the moment and choked.

Unlike a lot of the other stories regarding my St. Alphonsus days, this one did not necessarily end in my learning a lesson that shaped me and allowed me to move on. This experience was a window into a pattern of mine that has repeated in my life as thinking on my feet decision-making has been a weakness of mine to this day. I am great at making long-term important decisions when given adequate thinking time, say a few days. However, when presented with information that screams out there is something wrong with what I’m about to do and to stop to consider further, I just plow ahead.

I like to think that it made me kinder and more empathetic to others in my life that struggled socially, but I don’t know that it did. I think I’m just impatient with kids who are awkward like me. I’m certainly not as kind to my son as I could be.

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While digging around in some old files, I found a series of old vignettes about my school experiences from grades 2 through 8, at least one from each year. I wrote these a few years before Lucas died and while these aren’t directly related to the loss of Lucas, they have helped provide me with some insight as to what kind of person can come back from the loss of a son.

In some ways, these are more personal than anything else I have published. Sharing thoughts on the death of a child is one thing. People expect you to be a mess. Publishing about the embarrassments of childhood? That’s an entirely different animal.

Apart from obvious spelling and grammatical errors, I have kept them as they were when I wrote them. Also, I have removed last names or changed them in some cases.

Click on the following to read about:

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

Grade 6

I was an awkward kid without a lot of social capital who had a difficult time picking up on social cues. When thinking about this incident from the beginning of seventh grade, I have to wonder how close to the surface the animosity towards me was. How many times had I crossed the line of what was acceptable without even knowing it?

I’d like to say that I no longer feel the need to worry about friends, but even forty years later, I still frequently feel insecurity regarding my current friendships and whether I have done something to upset people I am close to.

Bryan and I were friends from an early age. We went to the same kindergarten. Around that time, I moved a few houses down from him. We went to different schools from first grade, but that didn’t really matter. Even though I lived walking distance from school, I didn’t live near any of my friends from school. I went to a private school so I had “school friends” and “neighborhood friends.” Back then, the idea of a playdate was not something that existed, at least not in my world. You just played with the kids around the neighborhood.

Around fourth grade, Bryan transferred to my school so he became a school friend and a neighborhood friend. This was around the same time that two of my school friends moved near me. Suddenly, my two worlds combined!

The summer before seventh grade, I moved to another neighborhood and had new neighborhood friends. By that time, I was much more mobile so I could make the two-mile bike ride to hang out with Bryan. While not an everyday occurrence, it wasn’t that hard, especially since he was near school.

One day, I came back to hang out with Bryan and helped with his paper route. He enthusiastically promised to pay me more money than he should have for helping. Honestly, I would have done it for free. I was happy to just hang out with him. In retrospect, I should have refused the money, but when you’re a kid with no reliable source of income it’s hard to say no.

The next time I came back to the old neighborhood to see him, I abruptly confronted him about it in front of his parents. They made him pay me, but clearly weren’t happy about him giving me that much money, three dollars from what I remember. I always got the impression that his parents were annoyed by me at best, didn’t like me and looked down on me at worst. He must have gotten into trouble over it because the next time I saw him at school, he fucking hated me. Not only that, two other good friends of mine from the old neighborhood also hated me.

The saddest thing about this was even though he was one of my oldest friends, his opinion of me changed as quickly as it did. I couldn’t believe that our friendship was so fragile. That incident was obviously some sort of tipping point which pissed him off and motivated him to rile up my other two friends. I must have created enough animosity with the three of them over time that they felt comfortable telling me to fuck off.

Clearly, I was terrible at reading the situation and modulating my expectations. I have been in the “needs improvement” category of this life skill for most of my adulthood. I think about how things might have been different had I not confronted him in such a manner in those circumstances.

In hindsight, I realize that there was more to the story than getting him into trouble with his parents. Kids at that age are so image conscious. Bryan and my other two friends were making moves to be cooler while I wasn’t. They recognized that I was holding them back and this gave them the opportunity to cut me loose.

This brings up several ideas about pre-adolescent friendships. Friendships are fickle. I can think of several examples of this from grade school. Bryan went to another school for eighth grade. Because we separated shortly after that, I never got to say goodbye on a good note. Who knows? If we had been given more time, maybe we would have become friends again in the end.

As an epilogue to this story, I searched for him recently and contacted him via Facebook. We chatted for a while and he’s doing well. He seems to be a person that I would still enjoy hanging out with if the circumstances were right. At one point he asked, “Weren’t you the kid that lived next to the alley?” This was clear evidence that I’d given the matter a lot more thought than he had. I didn’t bring up the fact that we had parted on a bad note and don’t know if he would even remember it.

It makes me wonder if there are people out there that I barely remember who considered me one of their best friends.

Consider a paid membership to show me that my writing has meant something to you. Regardless of whether you get a paid subscription, I hope you will keep coming back. I will keep all content free regardless of whether you pay for a subscription. Thanks!

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