As the story opens, the narrator is a young boy walking to his first day of school. The boy is delighted with the new clothes he is wearing for the occasion, but is apprehensive about going to school. As he walks along, holding onto his father's hand, he occasionally turns to ask his father why he must go; he feels that perhaps he is being sent away from home as a punishment.

Although his father reassures him, he is not convinced that "there really was any good to be had in tearing me away from the intimacy of my home." At the gate to the school, the boy hesitates again, and must be gently pushed by his father to enter the schoolyard. Telling him to "be a man," the father explains that "today you truly begin life."

Upon stepping into the yard, the boy sees the...