Why I Shredded My High School Essay

And what I understand now that I couldn’t then.

The year I graduated from high school, 1999, I was one of a handful of students who volunteered to give a speech at Senior Awards Night. The theme was something like:

Why I’m grateful to be an American.

I may be misremembering the exact wording, but the prompt was familiar. Craft a meaningful declaration of patriotism from the barely-formed brain of a lat…