Dorothy singing "Over the Rainbow" to Toto remains one of the most magical moments recorded on film. It touched something deep within many people’s hearts. In many ways, the only thing more delicate and ethereal than the colors of a rainbow in the still-glistening sky, its darkness being overcome by the bright light of the sun, is the look on a child’s face when he or she sees a rainbow for the first time.

My newest hero is my neighbor across the hall: a public high-school teacher thought of as funny, sensitive, but not all that deep.

There’s an old joke about the young man who went to Confession and said he had been experiencing temptations. “Did you entertain them, my son?” asked the kindly confessor. “No, Father,” replied the confused penitent, “but they sure entertained me!”

The dominant industry in the region where I live is agriculture, mostly small, family-owned fruit farms, which depend entirely on migrant labor. Last summer, a lot fewer migrant workers showed up.

After spring break, a priest and fellow teacher with few remnants of the full head of hair he once had, returned to school fitted with a toupee. When we all saw him for the first time, we couldn’t help but let our eyes travel right up to his new hairline. But he just ignored our stares. And we just pretended like we didn’t really see anything different about him.

The day after eighth grade my family moved, and all summer long I missed my friends back in the city. So I invited my friend Billy to spend the weekend.

“I just want my $1,500 dollars,” the man complained to the agent answering the compliance hotline. “It’s reimbursement for my gas and mileage. The clinics I service are refusing to pay even though it’s in my contract, and now they’re calling into question my job performance. It just doesn’t seem fair that I can’t get my measly 1,500 bucks when the doctors collect their checks, and they don’t even show up at the clinics.”

The first night of lost sleep due to existential angst that I remember was back in the fourth grade. I was in love with my teacher, Miss Verdi. That meant looking for opportunities to pound the chalk dust out of the erasers after school with all the manly strength I could muster.

Every time I hear the story of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, I stand amazed: The woman is lying in bed, sick with fever when Jesus takes her hand, pulls her up, and instantly cures her. She then waits on him and his pals.

As a young girl she always tried to avoid getting drafted to work in her mother’s garden. She disliked the planting, the pruning, the watering. She disliked the weeding the most. And so she would rush off to play with her friends.