It goes without saying that our society is obsessed with youth. As a person who feels 16-24 internally, but is pushing half a century externally, this is constantly drilled into my head.

I have never wanted children. Yes, I had baby dolls, including my beloved Pebbles who stuck with me through a terrible haircut, having her arm ripped off by my brothers, losing her clothes, and eventually being rehabilitated at the Doll Hospital in Bell Buckle at the insistence of my grandmother. But Pebbles was a doll, not a living child.

During my junior year abroad in Germany, I received a letter from a person I didn’t know. It was very thick and the return address was a prison in Nevada. I was intrigued, but also concerned. How in the world would someone in a Nevada prison get my mailing address in Germany?

And then I remembered my brother Tim.

When I was around 3 or 4, before I entered Kindergarten, I became convinced that I would never learn to read.