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about the young offenders named Tyrone or Mario? These young people rob others who look kind of like themselves and are often surprised when they have to raise their hands to the SWAT team. Big-eyed, they shout, “You mean me ?” They spend hours doing fingertip pushups in their cells. After five to ten years, they’re released to the public with sculpted bodies.
    My walk-jog-walk workout became a long-stepping climb as the wheels of my imagination spun in sand. I had volunteered to give this talk and hand out a few of my books as graduation gifts. Now I worried that I couldn’t reach these youth, a little old man up on a makeshift platform. Is “dawg” still part of the young people’s vernacular? I wondered. How about “the bomb”? Or “bad,” as in something cool? Was “cool” now un-cool? I promised myself not to make references to Justin Bieber.
    I paused to retie both shoes then stood up, hands on hips, a little winded, my face a wet brown stone. I began walking again with my head down, a jay scolding me from a low branch on a magnolia. I thought: just ad lib, make stuff up on the podium.
    â€œWe make mistakes,” I began, then winced at this imprudent piece of crap. I couldn’t open with that, or worse, “When I was a child . . . .” The young people in their seats, hands folded as if in prayer, would look down at their size-thirteen shoes and think, “Yeah, Pops, like you and Abe Lincoln. Dang, this is hecka boring!”
    I continued my walk-jog-walk, mustering up these observations: 1) today’s teenagers have it harder than when Abe and I were young, 2) prison is a mean business, and 3) when you’re asleep on the couch, a blaring television is not an option. Why the last? When the police come, you want everything quiet-like. That way, you can hear them coming up the steps in their storm-trooper boots and make a run for it.
    * * *
    On the other end of the social spectrum is Tana, my wife’s cousin’s daughter. She is five feet tall and weighs ninety-three pounds — of which seventy-five seem devoted to purposeful brainpower. She possesses a natural intelligence and the likeability and sophistication to go with it.
    At our recent day-after-Christmas family get-together, she and I sat on our smallish sofa, holding bowls on our laps. We faced each other, angled just so, momentarily separated by the steam from our chilaquiles breakfast. Frankly, however, there is more than steam to separate us. She is fifteen and the clock inside her ticks slowly. During every day that passes for her, a whole week seems to push rudely ahead for me. In short, I’m on the other end of life, with the gears inside me speeding briskly. At the risk of further depleting my dwindling store of self-confidence, I make two observations: 1) Tana is able to spring to her feet unaided, while I must push myself up with at least one hand; and 2) her eyes are clear and unpolluted, while mine are a scribbling mess of lunatic red. I could offer other distinctions, but I would lose my appetite for chilaquiles .
    When Tana parts her breakfast with a fork, more steam is released. She blows on the morsels in her bowl. She pokes them. She blows again and lifts the corner of the egg on top. To me, she’s a movie inside my head, each little gesture memorable, as when her paper napkin parachutes to the floor. It’s pretty the way she picks it up and even prettier when she sets it on her knee — God, am I so old that I must tally her every move? We each raise a forkful, blow some more, then taste. Carolyn, my wife, is the best short-order cook. I dab the corners of my mouth.
    â€œTana,” I ask, “what school do you go to?” She told me the previous Christmas, but I’ve forgotten.
    She puts down her fork, swallows, then says, “Boston Latin.”
    A school for eggheads, I’m certain, each egg with two or three languages