The boy didn’t have a lot going for him. At least, that’s what his parents first thought.

His parents were concerned. The other children would not stop laughing at their son. The other kids had turned him into a joke.

His name was Al. And there was something definitely different about the child. Foremostly, his speech. He didn’t speak until age 3. Not a word. Which means he never used any of the obligatory babytalk words like, “dada,” “mama,” “bye-bye,” and “poop.”

The doctors said it was a developmental delay. The long gaps between his verbal responses. Speaking only in fragments. Al didn’t start using complete sentences until age 4.

When his folks put him in school, it was hard going. The other kids teased him, incessantly giggling at him, whispering. He was bullied. Degraded. His teachers couldn’t connect with him. He was frustrated. He once threw a chair at his tutor.

The school was perpetually sending letters home, mostly about his behavior. He was a daydreamer, socially weird, he hated authority.

One teacher’s note said: “he will never get anywhere.” Another teacher said he was “mentally slow.”

The final straw was when a teacher’s note said the school was unable to teach this kid. So his exasperated mother purchased several books and tried teaching him at home.

Eventually, he found his way back to school, but he wasn’t your model student. And nothing had changed.

He still got crummy grades in geography, history, and languages. He still had a hard time making friends. Still disliked teachers, and all forms of authority. The kids still laughed.

By his teenage years, it was all he could take. He would inevitably leave school to join the prestigious ranks of us High-School Dropouts. (We were happy to have him as a club member.)

I’ve got your back today.

You don’t know me, but I’ve been watching you since you were a baby. I’ve been here beside you. You could call me your guardian angel, I guess. But we don’t really call ourselves anything.

Try not to think about the medieval depictions of us. Forget the wings and Grecian gowns. We’ve been trying to outlive that stereotype our whole lives.

We are not tall, muscular, blond, asexual creatures who wear glitter foundation and no underwear. There are no halos floating above our heads. Neither are we fat flying babies with bows and arrows.

What we are is highly advanced spirits who stand with you all the time. We are a cloud of witnesses to your entire life. Some of us have been human before. Throughout history, some have called us saints. Which is sort of ridiculous, because when we were on earth we were anything but “saintly.” Sometimes, we are the souls of your loved ones. Sometimes we are angels.

Either way, we are

a multitude of souls, sitting in the nosebleeds, watching your life play out. Some of us have been where you are. We have done what you’re doing.

Your religion is a funny thing. While nearly 80 percent of the world population believes in us, a lot of people are afraid to talk about our existence. Churches don’t mention us for fear they might sound like heretics. Ordinary people won’t talk about us because they don’t want to sound like they have been taking hallucinatory substances.

But 80 percent. Come on, people. Have you ever seen 80 percent of the globe agree on ANYTHING? Historically, humans can’t even agree on whether to use the metric system. But they agree on us.

Why? Because too many people have had experiences with us. There are septillions…

DEAR SEAN:

Shut up. You have no idea what you’re talking about. …Just who the hell do you think you are?

DEAR READER:

Who do I think I am?

My life begins at age 11. That’s when my father took his own life.

He killed himself probably because he was going to prison. The night before Daddy died, he was arrested for attempted murder, assault and battery, and threatening his family with a firearm.

He spent the night in county lockup. And I knew, as an 11-year-old boy, that he was freaking out. One of his worst fears was incarceration.

The last image of my father is imprinted on my brain. I am a little boy. Officers are reading Daddy his Miranda rights. My baby sister is screaming. My mother is battered and bloody. There are deputies in riot gear who entered our house with short-barrel shotguns.

And I’m saying goodbye to my father. Forever.

The next morning, his brother posts his bail. It's crazy expensive. He drops my father off at his house,

then goes to work. When my aunt gets home, her car comes charging into the garage, and she hits a body.

There’s a shotgun in the decedent’s hands. The body’s big toe is stuck in the trigger guard. It’s Daddy.

Nobody is ever the same.

Everyone is in shellshock. All the adults are worried about me because I’m not crying. They expect me to be a wreck, but I’m not. I’m just stunned. I can’t cry.

Oddly enough, I am relieved that he is dead. I am actually glad he’s gone. My father was so difficult to live with. He could fly off the handle at any moment. You never knew if you were getting Good Daddy or Abusive…

Be with them, Lord.

Comfort them. Embrace them. Bolster them. Ease their pain. Hold them like a parent holds a child. Give them uncommon strength during these present moments of horror.

Help them remember to eat. Help them remember to hydrate. Take care of their bodies. Because right now, many of them don’t care whether they live or die.

As I write this, 51 have been killed in the Texas floods, at least, and 15 are kids. The total of missing people isn’t even clear yet. What is clear is that 27 of them are girls who were attending Camp Mystic, a Christian youth camp on the River Guadalupe in Kerr County, the area worst affected.

Nearly 850 have been rescued, and 1,700 have been involved with the rescue operations.

So be with them, God. Be there in silent ways nobody would ever expect. Give them supernatural signs that their loved ones are still out there. Give comfort to those whose loved ones have passed, and are now safely

with You.

Give them all little miracles, God. Coat their hearts with tranquility and stillness. Whisper in their ears, words of affection and peace.

Be with the siblings of the girls who were lost. Be with the girls’ grandparents. With the camp staff. Be with the remorseful, the ones who cannot stop blaming themselves.

Be with the girls’ friends from school. With their teachers who loved them so. Be with the family pets, who still wait at front doors, tails wagging, wondering when their favorite girl is going to get back home.

Be with the entire community. Drape yourself over their towns and neighborhoods like a heavy mist.

Be with the rescuers, the first responders, the volunteers. Be with the EMTs, police officers, fire-medics, rescue parties, K-9 unit search teams,…

March, 1783. The Revolutionary War was not over. The throng of Continental soldiers encamped at headquarters was pissed.

And with good reason. The soldiers were bloody. Battered. They were sick. And worst of all, they were unpaid. Namely, because Congress would not get off its fat aspirations and pay its own army.

Just who did Congress think it was? These wealthy jerks, sitting in ornate boardrooms, wearing tight pants and powder wigs, making up new laws, refusing to fund their own army.

The soldiers were angry. Angry at the negligence. Angry at bloated government fatcats whose daughters mail-ordered clothes from Italy, whose sons studied Latin and ceramic pottery.

This was NOT the America the soldiers signed up for. This was B.S.

General Washington’s officers began whispering behind his back. They wrote seething letters in secret.

The soldiers had been circulating petitions suggesting large-scale mutiny. An anonymous letter was read aloud in the bunkhouses, barracks, and tents:

“Any further experiments on our patience may have fatal effects… If this then

be [our] treatment, while the swords [we] wear are necessary for the defence of America, what have [we] to expect from peace...?”

So the men’s minds were made up. They decided on mutiny. Screw this. They were going to abandon the war, let the American people fend for themselves against the British. Then, the army would march on Congress and demand paychecks, with muskets drawn.

Washintgon caught wind that his officers had planned a secret meeting. This was serious. These were HIS officers. HIS trusted guys. And they were plotting against him.

A meeting was called in New Windsor Cantonment, New York. March 15. A nation’s entire future hung in the balance. This is what happened at that meeting:

It was a large hall, entirely made of wood.…

A small-town Walmart. Rural. Lots of rusty trucks and 20-year-old cars. Busy. Tons of people from different walks.

The first thing you pass when you enter the crowded store is the greeter. An older Black woman, sitting on a stool. Blue vest.

Her smile is communicable. There’s something so happy in her eyes. Not fake. A warm, maternal energy.

Remember when you were little, and you’d show up to a church potluck with your mom? And all the church mothers would be there, buzzing around, setting up various casseroles, erecting card tables? All that maternal energy. All those smiles.

Remember how everybody knew everybody else? And everyone there was basically family? Remember what that felt like? Remember how even as a small child, you felt so… I don’t know. So not-alone. You felt so loved.

That’s what her smile somehow does to me.

Whereupon, I walk through this average Wally World, finding that I, too, am now smiling at random people.

There’s the guy at the pharmacy. He’s wearing construction clothes. Big

guy. Covered in grime. Marlboros in his shirt pocket. He’s missing teeth. He’s holding his little boy’s hand. And you can just FEEL how much his son worships him. You can also feel amazing love being exponentially returned by the father.

I smile at them. They both smile back.

In another aisle, a teenage girl, helping her mother. Mom is riding a motorized scooter. Mom has a surplus of tattoos on her bare shoulders and thighs, her head is half shaved, half permed. She doesn’t look that much older than the daughter.

They’re talking about something important, I can tell by body language. The girl is underconfident, struggling with something, and her mother is actively encouraging her child. I sense a deep, profoundly deep everlasting affection between…

Lake Martin shimmers beneath a heavy midday sun. I am sitting on a dock.

There are distant sounds of splashing. Kids laughing. All the children are swimming. All their respective adults are sitting ashore, dry. As adults often are.

There is nothing like July on the lake.

A boater comes speeding by, towing several middle-aged men on a water tube. The tube men are all yelling gaily, shouting two of the seven major American swear words.

The whole lake can hear these men. But nobody is offended by their language. We instead move in for a better look. Namely, because these men are well into their upper sixties, and yet here they are, traveling upwards of 187 mph behind the nautical thrust of approximately 350 horses.

Soon, everyone is watching these men. Then, the boat driver, who looks like a 12-year-old girl, throws the wheel and makes a donut in the water. The tube is whipped like a slingshot. The group of grandfathers lose their collective grip

and become instantly airborne, sailing into the great expanse of space-time, screaming barnyard expletives as they make their Wile E. Coyote-like journey into the lake, accompanied by splashes shaped like mushroom clouds from a nuclear field test.

I am drinking iced tea, taking it all in. The lake is teeming with youthful joy.

Nearby, I can hear kids playing Marco Polo. I hear them, giggling. Those poor kids. Marco Polo is pox on humanity.

I was a chubby boy. A redhead. A hopeless athlete devoid of coordination. Marco Polo was not my game. I hate Marco Polo. I once got caught in a game of Marco Polo that lasted over six years. This is why it has been my longstanding policy to cheat at Marco Polo. Life is too short.

Along with noises of…

There are a lot of things you can be. In fact, you can be anything you want in this life.

You can be social, or you can be anti-social. You can be an introvert, be an extrovert, or be an ambivert—which is both.

You can be alone. Or you can be a friend.

You can be cautious, be adventurous, be carefree.

Be exhausted, or be lively. Be wild, be peaceful, or you can be aggressive—be, be, aggressive!

You can always be right. A lot of people like to be this. They prefer to be an authority on every subject. These are probably the same people who were told by their parents to “be smart,” “be a winner,” or “don’t be an embarrassment.”

Meanwhile, some people would rather be quiet. Be in the background.

You can be other things, too. You can be a hard worker, be prepared, be responsible, be on top of things, be ready, or be a doer. Or you can be easy going, be chill, or be as lazy as

a house cat.

Then again, you could also be what other people want you to be. You can be a pleaser. You can be obligated. You can be busy, fulfilling everyone else’s needs. Be dutiful. Be committed to all causes but your own.

Or you can just be yourself. You can be free. Be empowered. Be comfortable with who you are. Be invested in your own life.

Likewise, you can be angry. Be upset. Be a victim. Be rageful. You can be crisis-centered. You can be the star of your own life’s movie.

Or you can be selfless. You can be nice. Be humble. Be part of the solution rather than the problem.

Be a helper, instead of a critic. Be a…

They say blind dogs shouldn’t run.

Namely because you can’t run when you’re a blind dog. You might run into stuff. Too many dangers. It’s scary.

Even if your owner takes you to a big park, where there are no obstacles, only a big green field, you still can't run wide-open.

Too many variables. What if you collide with a park goer? What if you get disoriented and run the wrong direction, and head straight into traffic? What if you outrun your owner and then you’re on your own?

Your owner, your dad. He’s your security blanket. You can’t be without him.

So you mostly live a life without running. You walk everywhere very carefully. You have the house mapped out in your head. You know how to move up and down the stairs. You know how to use your nose the same way a blind person uses a cane.

But under no circumstances will there ever be any running. It’s simply too frightening.

Still, here’s the thing. You’re a dog. You’ve got this huge part of your genealogy

that is saying, constantly, “WE NEED TO RUN!”

Your biology is alway screaming at you. That’s part of being canine. Your physiology is perpetually barking important messages to your conscious mind:

“WE NEED TO EAT OUR SECOND BREAKFAST!”

“WE MUST DRINK OUT OF THE TOILET EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE A PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE WATER BOWL WHICH IS KEPT REPLENISHED BY OUR MOM WITH DISTILLED WATER THAT IS FREE OF FLUORIDE AND PURCHASED FROM THE SUPERMARKET!”

“WE MUST REFER TO OURSELVES IN THE COLLECTIVE TENSE AND SPEAK IN ALL CAPS!”

Because you’re a dog. This is just how dogs are.

So it sucks being blind. Because when your canine brothers and sisters go outside, they are…

This story is for a young man named Anderson (12). He knows who he is. And he knows why I’m writing.

Once upon a time, there was a duck named Lucky. He was small and white with a bright yellow bill, and he was born missing one leg.

Lucky was unable to walk on land, but he could swim. In fact, Lucky never left the water. He couldn’t. Thus, while other ducks were on land, doing duck things, eating berries and acorns, Lucky stayed in the water, watching from afar.

He never understood why his mama named him Lucky. It was a weird name for a duck that wasn’t like other ducks. All his brothers and sisters had normal duck names like Donald, and Daffy, and AFLAC.

Lucky wished so badly that he could walk on two legs, like the others. Instead, whenever he tried to venture from the water, he could only hobble a single step, then collapse from exhaustion. Then he’d wiggle back into the water with shame.

One day, Lucky met a turtle

named Billy. Billy was a baby turtle with no front legs. Billy was sitting onshore, watching Lucky swim.

“Swimming looks like fun,” Billy called out. I wish I could swim. But alas, I am a mud turtle, and mud turtles are not great swimmers even WITH all their legs. But without front legs, all I can do is sink to the bottom. Alas, all I can do is scoot along the floor of the forest.”

Lucky replied, “I wish I could scoot like you. But alas, all I can do is swim.”

“Alas,” said Billy.

“Alas,” said Lucky.

Then they both said it together.

That’s when Lucky had an idea.

“Hey, I know!” said Lucky. “Would you like to…