Dear B, During a vocab lesson today, one of my students defined “foolhardy” as “funny,” and I had to tell her that she was wrong. She looked so confused, and then she said, “I’m sorry. I thought it meant what I wanted it to mean.” I’ve never heard a student phrase it like that before, and I’ve been thinking about it all day. Maybe the boxes are like that, too. Nobody can offer any foolproof explanation for them, so they just end up meaning whatever we want them to mean—whether that’s God or fate or magic. And no matter how long your string is, that, too, can mean whatever you want it to—a
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