The Secret
There’s an honesty in kids that feels like a breath of fresh air, a clarity of expression that’s almost lost by the time adulthood rolls around. It’s one of the reasons I became a teacher—an excuse, perhaps, to avoid the muddled, double-meaning conversations of grown-ups and instead embrace the unfiltered world of children. I never quite understood adults; they’d say one thing but mean another, wrap their words in life’s accumulated baggage, intentions thickened with expectations, social norms, and disappointments. And me, I’d take them at face value, a habit that left me too often disillusioned and, frankly, confused.
I could usually tell when someone was feeding me a line, but seeing through the façade wasn’t enough; interpreting what was underneath was a different beast entirely. I’d guess at their real meanings, usually getting it wrong, leading to a familiar, isolating frustration. Kids, on the other hand, were different—direct in ways adults seem to forget how to be. Not pure, necessarily, but clear, uncluttered. If they were happy, you saw it, unencumbered by doubts, anxieties, or the need to justify the feeling. Even if they hid things, their reasons were simple and easier to understand, usually rooted in fear of consequence or an innocent desire to please.
It reminded me of my own childhood and a secret I kept. My father was an inner-city minister and social worker in Detroit, a man devoted to the community and to serving others. When a house was donated to his church, my dad immediately saw a project, a way to repurpose the old building into something helpful—a community center called the Friendship House. At that point, it was far from a place of comfort or joy. The house was a shell, filled with the grim remnants of neglect: broken furniture, filthy bathrooms, and cockroaches. Lots of cockroaches. But to my dad, it had potential.
He pulled together a group of volunteers to fix it up, and I, eager to be a part of things, joined in. My job was to pick up trash—a less glamorous role, perhaps, but it meant being involved. Plus, the job came with its own rewards: whatever “treasures” I unearthed were mine to keep. I found coins, odd trinkets, and other curiosities, but one day in a bedroom, things went sideways. Sifting through debris, I felt a sharp jab on my finger. I recoiled and saw what had pierced me: a junkie’s discarded hypodermic needle.
I felt a momentary shock, and then the fear set in. It didn’t hurt much, just a quick pinch, but it felt like a world of trouble had been unleashed. My mind raced with worst-case scenarios—was I going to need a shot? Hospitals and doctors’ offices, in my kid-mind, were just places you went to get jabbed with needles. And I hated shots. Another, stranger fear crept in: would I become a heroin addict? I’d heard somewhere that all it took was one needle, and you were hooked for life. The very thought of it terrified me.
Now, any sensible kid might’ve immediately called out for help, told an adult, sought medical advice. But my terror sealed my mouth shut. Admitting what happened meant one of two things: either I’d have to get a shot, or I’d find myself spiraling down some dark path into addiction. Neither option sounded good. And so I stayed quiet. For days, I waited, anxiety a constant companion, expecting either to fall deathly ill or be marched to the doctor’s office for a needle poke. But after a few days passed without incident, I let myself breathe. Relief washed over me, a wave that left behind a powerful lesson: not all secrets need to be told. I’d broken the golden rule of honesty, but the world hadn’t ended.
From then on, I understood something about fear, and about kids. Fear could make anyone hide the truth, not out of malice, but out of sheer, unfiltered terror. That lesson stayed with me into my teaching career. I paid attention to what my students said, but I listened even more closely to what they didn’t say. They had their secrets, their moments of fear and shame, and that, to me, was as close to pure truth as you could get.
And like that, I found a place I could truly understand. A place where secrets were fewer, and the ones that did exist were not malicious, just misunderstood. And that, for me, was the joy in teaching—the honesty in omission, the truth in silence, and the joy in the uncluttered words of kids trying to make sense of their world, just as I had once tried to make sense of mine.