The airplane tickets Popo and Pwapwa, my Burmese grandparents, sent my brother and me promised another great summer. Burma proved to be the same enchanting childhood “escape” of four summers before, but the joy I felt at the end of this trip came in an unexpected way. In my grandparents’ home in Yangon, we were cared for by the teenage live-in house helper, Ma Thazin. She taught us things about Burma that my grandparents never could: we learned to climb...

GENERAL “I’ve been thinking… I want to sail across the Atlantic Ocean,” I said in a hushed voice at the dinner table. Everyone turned to me with expressions that suggested I had brought the chicken on my plate back to life. My family’s reaction was appropriate as we were not a sailing family and we had neither abundant resources nor useful connections. Fortunately, learning this at an early age taught me to not wait around for help. Four...

SHORT When my counselor got to my name at the first roll call of Boys State he asked, “Is ‘E’ present?” This drew some snickering from my “fellow citizens”; I realized he was referring to me but had given my 4-letter name a nickname. When I politely corrected him he responded, “I don’t care E.” Nothing short of brainwashing my electorate would erase that first impression and I didn’t have the time because the city election was held 20...