At age nine, I had an epiphany. I was watching my parents holding hands as we walked across a parking lot after a football game. It was late afternoon, and they were in front of me, their silhouettes tilted toward each other intimately. It was a jolt: the first time I perceived them as something sep

The girl who plows into my 13-year-old daughter as we stroll through the park at the annual Mountain Festival is solid. She is pierced with studs in odd places. Her tank top just covers her adolescent breasts. The force of her forward-pumping legs nearly knocks my daughter off her feet, and she stag