Let’s be honest for a minute. Most of us lie to our friends on a fairly regular basis and are, in turn, lied to by them. Furthermore, that’s the way we want it. It is an unwritten contact that we rely on to keep our friendships burnished to a nice sheen, as well as a way for us to continue to perpetuate certain kinds of delusions that make us feel more comfortable in various areas of our lives.

We are not a camping family. It’s probably my fault, if there is a need to assign blame. I joined the Boy Scouts when I was a kid mostly because some of my friends did. Also, I liked some of the Patrol names. For example, I was a member of the “Screaming Eagles,” which sounded fierce, intimidating and patriotic, all at the same time. But I hated the uniforms, which seemed goofy and slightly effeminate to me, with the scarves and the khaki shorts and all the bling for the more highly decorated scouts.

Twenty years ago, a friend and I would get together on the weekends of the major golf tournaments and bet an enormous Japanese take-out meal on whether Tiger Woods would win against the field. He would take Tiger and I would take the field. If you know anything at all about golf, that bet is nearly unimaginable — one golfer against 156 of the best players in the world — but Tiger Woods was so dominant in those days that the odds seemed just about even that he would win any given tournament, especially the big ones like the Masters and the U.S Open. I won a few of those bets, but I also paid for quite a few of those prodigious meals.

When you’re young and in love, you feel invincible, like nothing can ever possibly contaminate the perfect union you have formed. This is oh so sweet, but you should know that it is unbearably annoying to everyone else. There is something else you should also know.

When you’ve been sick long enough, your perception of reality begins to change. A couple of days may be no worse than a slightly uncomfortable vacation at home watching the game show channel or reading old magazines or telling people how miserable you are on Facebook. You force fluids, you sleep as much as you can, you get over it. It is sort of like enduring an unpleasant visit from people you don’t much like.

When Walter comes trundling down the driveway, he always reminds me of what a camera tripod might look like if it had just been granted the wish to walk, but hadn’t exactly learned how yet. He gets along in this sort of halting, stiff-legged gait that looks awkward and uncomfortable, but he is also always wearing that same smile he has been wearing for the 14 years that we’ve had him in the family.

Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty-eight dead. Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, Virginia. Thirty-three dead. Stoneman Douglass High School, Parkland, Florida. Seventeen dead. Harvest Music Festival, Las Vegas, Nevada. Fifty-nine dead.

When Tammy and I met almost exactly 15 years ago, there were a few adjustments we had to make, like most couples. She almost fainted when she discovered that there were entire walls in my house covered from floor to ceiling with compact discs and record albums. I could sense that she felt that my décor — “college boy with slightly more disposable income” — left something to be desired.

His is the face that provoked untold millions of posts on social media, the teenage boy from Kentucky face-to-face with an aging Native American man playing a drum, the two of them surrounded by a group of shouting boys, many of them in those red “Make America Great Again” hats.

We see the boy smiling. Is that a smug smirk, or the smile of a boy who has no idea how to react to what is happening in this moment? What does it “mean,” what does it “say?” The imagery itself is so fraught that it is all but impossible to view the photograph without experiencing waves of emotion, immediate and visceral, but also deeply embedded in a painful and resonant history.

When I was in my teens, I was so skinny that people winced when they saw me. The local druggist offered to buy me a cheeseburger if I would eat it in front of him. Imagine if God had left the making of humans to a fourth-grade science class supplied with nothing but a box of coat-hangers and a bag of hair. That was me, all sharp angles and a mop of light blonde hair. I looked like a walking geometry problem.

I tried eating more, but no matter how many times I loaded my plate with spaghetti, or mashed potatoes and roast beef, or chicken and dumplings, I just could not “fill out.” I messed around some with weightlifting in physical education class, but I was so weak, I could barely lift the bar by itself, let alone with any plates on it, even the small ones.