I’m going to tell you stories. In the desert where I was a child, the wind stings like anything. A desert dust devil would whip up and send all of us racing across the softball field to escape the sandblasting of sharp grains of sand into our tender calves. Everyone’s hair was a mess all of the time. Everyone had seen that one teacher’s underwear, because she wore billowy skirts that go clean over her head in a gust. There…