In January 1990, after the two teenage boys who mugged me in West Philadelphia the previous Fall were arrested, I was asked to attend juvenile court for their hearing. When I arrived, a prosecutor thankd me for showing up: My presence would lead both the boys to plead guilty, which they then did. As a third-time offender, the older one was sent to a youth detention camp in the Pennsylvania countryside. After giving the younger one a stern lecture about disappointing his grandmother, who was raising him, the judge gave him a suspended sentence with probation. I wonder what happened to those boys, who would now be in their early fifties. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 August 2026)