For me, commentary on war zones at home and abroad begins and ends with personal reflections. a few years ago, while watching the news in chicago, a local news story made a personal connection with me. the report concerned a teenager who had been shot because he had angered a group of his male peers. this act of violence caused me to recapture a memory from my own adolescence because of an instructive parallel in my own life with this boy who had been shot. when i was a teenager some thirty-five years ago in the new york metropolitan are, i wrote a regular column for my high school newspaper. one week, i wrote a column in which i made fun of the fraternities in my high school. as a result, i elicited the anger of some of the most aggressive teenagers in my high school. a couple of nights later, a car pulled up in front of my house, and the angry teenagers in the car dumped garbage on the lawn of my house as an act of revenge and intimidation (garbarino).