One Wednesday I spent a couple of hours hassling a ten year old to finish his homework sheet. I talked him through his sentence exercises, writing about his room. It turned out he had two rooms: one at his mother's in San Francisco, and one at his father's in Seattle. His room in Seattle, he told me, was much cleaner than his room in the City. Once he was gone, I was looking for something to do. I ended up playing a couple of games of chess with a middle school student. Finally, I thought, someone I can beat at chess. Both games were pretty close. Every now and then I would check the kid out, and he looked like he was having a good time. And I figured, If all this kid remembers about 826 is that he lost a couple of games of chess there, he'd probably let his own kid stop by.

– Henry Murphy