Our parents thought we might be corrupted by one another into becoming whatever it was they most feared: an incorrigible masturbatory, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnated libertine. On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent friendship, the predatory behavior of strangers on trains, the lure of the wrong kind of girl. How far their anxieties outran our experience.

The Sense of an Ending