592. No, Virginia

Most of us adults don’t have bedtimes imposed on us by other people. We go to sleep when we decide to. That’s even more true of us retired adults; we’re less likely to have to get up at a fixed time, so why go to bed when we don’t feel like it? True, there are…

There are countless hours spent in courtrooms and dollars paid to lawyers because we want things to be fair. Someone else has done something that shouldn’t have been done or gotten something that we should have gotten, and we want justice. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just go up to some taller person…

A friend of mine, who does workshops for teachers and other human services workers around this country, likes to tell about a woman who decided to see a career counselor. As the two were discussing her various career options, she told the counselor, “What I really want to do is be a veterinarian, but that…

Today, on the bus, I heard a woman behind me yelling angrily at the children who were with her. As far as I could tell, the children weren’t doing anything for which they deserved to be yelled at; they were just being children. But angry yelling seemed to be this woman’s way of speaking to…

A typical strategem for adults who want children to do certain things they’d rather not do is to remind children of something better that awaits them if they just finish doing the less pleasant thing: “There’s a great dessert waiting for you, and you can have it as soon as you finish eating your vegetables.”…

In 1974, I attended a rally in support of the integration of the Boston Public Schools. The featured speakers were Jonathan Kozol, James Meredith, and Benjamin Spock. I felt as if I was on the right (correct) side of the issue, and that only narrow-minded bigots were on the other side. I thought that integrating…