It Is No Loss To Mankind When

I Had A Tourette's Period. And Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Things Would Get In My Brain That I Couldn't Get Out Of My Brain.

They May Already Know Too Much About Their Mother And Father--nothing Being More Factual Than Divorce, Where So Much Has To Be Explained And Worked Through Intelligently (though They Have Tried To Stay Equable). I've Noticed This Is Often The Time When Children Begin Calling Their Parents By Their First Names, Becoming Little Ironists After Their Parents' Faults. What Could Be Lonelier For A Parent Than To Be Criticized By His Child On A First-name Basis?

Something Will Be There When The Flood Recedes. We Know That. It Will Be Those People Now Standing In The Water, And On Those Rooftops - Many Black, Many Poor. Homeless. Overlooked. And It Will Be New Orleans - Though Its Memory May Be Shortened, Its Self-gaze And Eccentricity Scoured Out So That What's Left Is A City More Like Other Cities, Less Insular, Less Self-regarding, But Possibly More Self-knowing After Today. A City On Firmer Ground.

When You Are Sixteen You Do Not Know What Your Parents Know, Or Much Of What They Understand, And Less Of What's In Their Hearts. This Can Save You From Becoming An Adult Too Early, Save Your Life From Becoming Only Theirs Lived Over Again--which Is A Loss. But To Shield Yourself--as I Didn't Do--seems To Be An Even Greater Error, Since What's Lost Is The Truth Of Your Parents' Life And What You Should Think About It, And Beyond That, How You Should Estimate The World You Are About To Live In.

If There's Another Thing That Sportswriting Teaches You, It Is That There Are No Transcendent Themes In Life. In All Cases Things Are Here And They're Over, And That Has To Be Enough.