My childhood wasn’t so bad. I had a stack of Noxzema pads, a trundle bed. I had ketchup sandwiches, and a yard, a ditch where onions grew, fat and purple. Back then my teachers said war was good for the economy, and instead of I don’t care my friends and I would say Free country, as if that gave us permission to do anything we wanted, like hock loogies out the bus window, or say that we, too, could become President someday, despite all evidence to the contrary. To me, the sweater of America had only just begun unraveling: imagine, I had never seen a murder on a telephone. I hadn’t even heard of student loans, or proxy wars, or mortgages gone underwater. I used to draw the ocean full of smiling fish. I had a crush on Officer Kip, the DARE cop, who, the first week of class, set out a box that said, in navy Sharpie, Tell Me Everything. From my assigned seat, I wrote what I was told. Back then, I believed that growing up meant being free. That I could choose my life. I really thought that they would ask, and I could just say no.