“I am here to protect all of us from the ugly world.”

—Laura Samuel Sett

According to a lot of the adults in our town, everything here is perfect.

We don’t have accidents. We don’t have any crime at all. We don’t have Halloween anymore. Or junk food. We don’t have bad thoughts. We don’t use any bad words, like cancer or death or sex or donut.

A lot of people thank Ms. Laura Samuel Sett for this. She’s as famous as a person can get in our town, and probably the only reason the local newspaper is still in print. Everyone reads her letters there.

Ms. Sett is also a sixth-grade teacher, but the adults around here are her students as much as kids like me who pass through her classroom at Independence North Elementary School. Those adults join Ms. Sett in letter writing, sitting on the town council and committees, and making rule after rule after rule. They seem to believe that rules equal safety—by making more rules, they are keeping us all safe and keeping the town’s reputation spotless.

Ms. Sett thinks that if we even think about “bad things,” our whole town could fall right into the toilet of the world.

“Just like all those other towns,” she says.

The adults around here don’t just keep our town safe from unsavory words and thoughts. They keep our town safe from unsavory people, too. And if we believe what the adults around here say, then unsavory people are anyone who doesn’t go to church, anyone who doesn’t pledge the flag louder than the person next to them, and anyone who eats junk food.

Most of us have to go to the next town over to do our grocery shopping so we can buy Cheetos.

My family has ignored the town’s silly rules for as long as I can remember. We don’t go to church, I don’t pledge the flag overly loudly, and we eat a decent amount of junk food. My mom loves Oreos. I love Cheetos. And my grandad is a bona fide candy freak.

Ms. Sett wrote a letter to the paper one time about an elderly man who sits on Main Street, always eating candy. She asked for him to be removed for his bad example to children. She was talking about Grandad. Here’s what he did in response: He started bringing me with him.

Don’t get me wrong—we eat really good homemade food and a lot of fruits and vegetables, and I get a lot of calcium and vitamins and grains and protein and all the other stuff in the food pyramid.

There are much worse things in the world than junk food. Mom knows it because she works at a place that helps people grieve the death of their loved ones and helps people with cancer and other terminal illnesses. Grandad knows it because he fought in the Vietnam War. My dad sure knows it, because he’s always mad at something—like, every single day.

I just think Ms. Sett and the adults around here should mind their own business. I don’t think any town is perfect and I don’t think any town is in the toilet of the world. I think life is what life is and we just have to try our best.

Life is what life is and we just have to try our best. —Mac Delaney

For all I’m about to say here about her and for all her weird rules, Ms. Sett taught me to stand up for myself and I’m grateful to her for that.

You’re probably confused.

Yes, Ms. Sett is a pain and thinks we shouldn’t eat Cheetos. But also yes, she was nice to me when I needed it most.

No one is ever just one thing.

And not everyone is telling the truth.

That’s the closest anyone will ever get to perfect.