He shook my hand, because somebody had taught him to, and then he said, “You were a soldier,” and I said, “I was,” and that was the entire basis of our relationship for about six weeks.

He beat me at air hockey four times.

He is a vicious air hockey player and he does not let you have one.

The second time was in February at a museum in Raleigh that has a rocket in the lobby, and this is where I learned the thing that changed how I thought about all of it.

He is interested in rockets.

Genuinely, not as a phase — there was the badly painted one on the shelf at Chestnut Street, and there are four more, and he knows the names of engines and he knows which ones are legal for a child to launch with an adult and which are not.