One snowy afternoon in 1993, in an outlying "stick building" of an elementary school that has since been torn down, I co-wrote my first-ever short story with a classmate on an Apple II. We were eight years old. Our teacher probably didn't love our plot, which featured a werewolf carving a bloody reign of terror through a small town. But she encouraged us anyway: helping us save the story to disk, print two copies on a dot matrix printer, and bind the pages with red plastic combs. She met us where our interests lie, not *hers*. I'm grateful for that. She shaped my life. ⏭️ [[cinnamon and licorice]]