Purpose

Awareness, purpose.

1986

I was 31 years old teaching third-grade in Cambridge Massachusetts. A boy, call him, Luke, was in my class. He had terrible handwriting, and hated reading. During reading period, he would slump all over his desk as if his bones had gelatinized, and he matched his posture with an exhausted expression that suggested he was on the verge of collapse. The second recess was announced, his face lit, he bounced up, and fled rapidly into the play yard, and whatever natural science experiment he had underway in some dirt pile. Our science teacher was an entomologist by avocation, and Luke would try to find every exotic bug for her to name. She never disappointed.