I was deeply touched by Anne Lamott's honest account of her real, not-so-acceptable feelings about her teenage son. Her wisest statement, which I wish could be written on every birth certificate issued to a new parent:

"This is what teenagers have to do, because otherwise they would never be able to leave home and go off to become their own people."

If a mother is looking for the seeds of forgiveness, that's where they are. If she is looking for the next action to take, though, I think she hit the bullseye with the no-nonsense order to her son just to do the job he was supposed to do. No beating is necessary. No overreacting, no grounding. Just the bottom line.

Insurance companies also have bottom lines: They do not cheaply insure young men who hit curbs at 20 mph. Let him become his own person on an insurance policy. Your local Starbucks is hiring just such enterprising kids facing rising insurance bills.

And feel any way you like about it. He is going to feel his own feelings, too. And when he goes off to become his own person, he will be a person who was raised with real boundaries.

Maybe Al Gore isn't running for president now because he didn't run in the first place. A corporate-financed dead guy in a Brooks Brothers suit ran in his name. Why hasn't anyone noticed that the candidate who nearly, or probably, won against the current president was a corpse, a figment of a focus group's imagination? What does that tell us about how well a live person could do?

But a live person with morals and ethics, which Al Gore may well have become, is considered a long shot for the presidency. To borrow from an op-ed posted long ago on Salon, Americans seem to have internalized the image game. An awkward, quiet guy with a slide show could never lead us, so say the pundits and we. So what the heck was Abraham Lincoln, except the same thing without even a slide show?

The so-called leaders of this country are children because we are children, craving cartoon entertainment. We will not have true leaders in this country again until we grow up.

Leave the husband at home and dance with everyone. The biggest secret about reunions is that they're FUN, beyond anything you can imagine if you have never been to one. Everyone should go. They're fun because, contrary to the myth, nobody is proving anything about their success unless they're best-selling writers or something. They're just curious about everyone else. Aren't you?

Nobody cares that you were a nerd. I was, and I wouldn't miss a reunion for the world.

Some hurts have been healed, others not, but the world goes on. Most surprisingly, the girl who threatened me with violence in high school is now a different person and a good friend since I met her afresh at the 20-year. It feels good to watch her heal her own past. She has no responsibility toward mine.

Instead, I hold the adults who were in charge responsible. I am going to heal my past wounds by advocating respect for the kids of today. Are we going to hold their caretakers accountable, or just whine about our own pasts?

This time around, I volunteered to find people. There are some names on that list that truly scare me, but today I am going to call to confirm the address of the guy I smacked for his sexual harassment at 16. Twenty-six years and one divorce later, he may yet have learned respect for women. I can hardly wait to find out.

Americans, Iraqis, and Afghans have lost loved ones in this war-without-end. The number of critically wounded soldiers continues to rise. Wars are supposed to be fought against real threats. That the president or even his handlers and staffers could even mention a "war paradigm" as a means of maniupulating us is obscene. This war is real, deadly, and immoral -- not a movie called "Wag the Dog," not a political strategy, not a joke.

Shame on them and on every American who would cynically vote for such a regime. And on every American who would not risk his or her own life to fight against it.