Everything in me wanted to go into that house and up those stairs and wake him up.

I had it planned.

I had the card in my hand and I was going to put on the light and hold it in front of his face and say what is this.

I got as far as the door to the kitchen twice.

What stopped me was not nobility and it was not strategy.

I am a chemistry teacher.

What stopped me was a thing I say to sixteen-year-olds about four hundred times a year, which came into my head at one in the morning in a garage completely unbidden, in my own voice, in the tone I use in a classroom.