Last night, one of my first graders looked up at me with his huge warm eyes and said, “Miss Janice, I was tricked today.”

“Oh,” I said, “How were you tricked?”

“Some other boys were talking about balls and they were telling me to talk about balls, too.  And so I told them that I like balls and they laughed.”

He hesitated. I thought he might cry.

“And then I found out they weren’t talking about soccer balls. They were talking about private balls.”