I remember walking down the sidewalk on the hill in front of Hadley School with my mother. I watched my best friend Dan fall with his hands out in front of him onto his face. He’d already started crying by the time his mother was helping him up. Dan was a year older than me, like all the other kids in my grade.

I turned to my mother and told her that I hadn’t realized that big kids could also cry like kids my age could. I’d never seen an adult cry at that point in my life and assumed that it was just something you’d be physically incapable of after a certain age. Like losing baby teeth.

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