We didn’t get ribbons for doing a good job and we weren’t awarded for just showing up: there were actual winners and losers. School shootings didn’t yet exist—at least they weren’t epidemic—but we were physically bullied, generally by older kids and usually without parental commiseration or even comment. And we definitely weren’t told how special we were at every opportunity. (Yet I can’t remember hearing about a single peer’s suicide during my childhood and adolescence—either nationally or within the LA private-school system.) It was the out-of-control defiance of horror movies that made this
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