November 30, 2018:

Third grade, still happy, it hasn't yet all gone to shit.

Brown hair, not black till college. Cheekbones, eyebrows, compassionate hazel eyes without the eyeglasses that'll turn up any minute. Red sweater knitted by his mother with white, black, and gray trim. His top front teeth are missing.

I see no sign of the horrific lack of body mass the adults were so concerned about. His shoulders are round, there's fat in his checks. He's just lanky, like all the men in that family. There's nothing to get excited about.

The adults, though. Parents, teachers, school officials, neighbors, relatives. Incompetent. Not merely helpless. Dangerous to themselves and everyone they come in contact with. Including most emphatically this happy little boy.

It goes to shit in two quick waves. His mother moves to a new school district. She wants to be closer to her bestie. Although that friendship soon ends, the move tears this previously happy little boy away from the friends he loves so truly. He loves them so much that as soon as he can he rides his bike thirty miles across town hoping to find them again. The new school district wants him in their gifted program. That tears him away from the new friendships he's just building, in their new neighborhood, where from here on he'll always be the strange special kid with the strange special school.

He's knows what a mistake it is. It seems obvious to him. But it's one little boy against parents, teachers, school officials, neighbors, relatives. Who are united in their quite incompetent belief that they know better than he does what's best for him.

Dunning-Kruger. It started that early.