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his silences. He auditions for no one.
    We’ve always been close, but I have come to realize our relationship has been predicated on proximity. We’ve loved reading together from the time he was a baby; we explored the hills and beaches and railroad tracks of our neighborhood. We ran in the yard with our dogs; we navigated the laughter, love and hurt of adolescence together. Soon the geography of our relationship will change and we will builda new one based around distance, and while I hope it will be as close as before, I know it will never be the same.
    Matthew is in the middle of the college application process. Choosing a school has always been an arduous and drama-filled travail for our family. I have only recently recovered from the great kindergarten search. After gaining a coveted meeting with a prestigious school’s admissions director, I watched my son jam a shark’s tooth into the woman’s ear. Why a supposedly learned child-care expert would have such a small health hazard within a child’s reach remains a mystery and should have been a sign that perhaps this fancy-pants school wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. There were other signs that I chose to ignore as well.
    While some of the school’s third and fourth graders carried books through the hallways, a larger portion carried skateboards. Having grown up in Malibu, I was not unaccustomed to Southern California’s less-than-respectful fashion ethos, but even I was taken aback by the sheer numbers of boys dressed like Jeff Spicoli. When we were touring a sixth-grade science class, a kid raised his hand with a question. “Pete,” the eleven-year-old student asked the teacher, who was in his midforties and wearing surf shorts, “what is more common, zooplankton or phytoplankton?” While I struggled to come up with the answer myself, I struggled even more with the concept of a little boy referring to his adult teacher by his first name. I was well versed in this sort of educational culture; in fact, my mother had placed my younger brother Micah in such a kindergarten in Malibu years ago, a local institution. The founder of the school didn’t believe in “structured” teaching or apparently discipline of any kind. Whenever I picked my brother up from school, many kids were AWOL, running around in the hills above the school like savages. Even as a sixteen-year-old I had the notion that this was no way to run a railroad, so,years later, I was sort of relieved when Matthew took matters into his own hands and ended our application process with the shark’s tooth.
    My wife, Sheryl, and I did eventually find the right school for him. I think we all react to the way we were raised as we try to navigate our roles as parents. Neither my mother nor my father was particularly involved in my life at school (although they did instill a work ethic and made sure all homework was done). With my own kids, I wanted to be as much a part of their school experience as I could, as did Sheryl.
    For me, this meant taking part in as many school functions and extracurricular activities as I could. I coached both of my sons’ elementary school basketball teams. One of my fondest memories is winning the league championship for the school’s first time. (As Ty Cobb said, “it ain’t bragging if you’ve done it.”) Even though some of what I thought were my best motivation techniques were probably too advanced for sixth graders, I loved being with the kids. I’m not sure if they fully appreciated my grabbing them by the jerseys at half time, eyes blazing, and admonishing them with, “No one, and I mean no one , comes into our house and pushes us around!” When the kids looked at me with blank faces, I would tell them, “It’s from the film Rudy . You know, Ara Parseghian? The great Notre Dame coach? . . . Ah, never mind, just toughen up out there!” And you know what? Inevitably, they would.
    I learned that kids are like actors on a set: They want to know that