Eddie

I had a serious phobia and I just hightailed it and I ran screaming.

I don't know if it was that time, but I know there were other times that I ran across Hyde Park Boulevard, which is a busy street with buses and cars and trucks, back to the safe side where the school building was.

And I remember being laughed at by you and other students in the class.

Not saying you're the only one, but I perceived you as the ringleader.

My memory over the arc of our young childhood was being teased by you.

And at some point, that became layered on my dog phobia.

And so in a way, you became the dog.

I think I just wept at that moment.

I was just so grateful to...

or to read that you had accepted what I wrote with such incredible grace.

And I just felt blessed.

It was big.

It was a momentous time in my life.

I mean, it's a time that there's a before and there's an after.

No.

I think I did, or at least in retrospect, I did.

I remember sharing it with other people and they said, did he really apologize?

And I'm like, my sense is that

perhaps not fully, but it was enough.

It was what I needed at that moment, and perhaps I chose to layer more apology on it than you were actually saying at the time.