Speaker 1: To BarthWB@childrenscounselingservices. com, from StokesHP@ccs.k12.ns. us. Date: September 23rd, 9: 02 PM. Subject: It goes both ways.

Dear Dr. Barth, I looked you up. If you're going to know everything about me, then I ought to know at least a thing or two about you. You went to East Carolina. I guess that's okay, but dude, you kind of overdid it with the degrees. You got three sets of letters after your name. BA, MS, PhD, and you spend your life talking to kids. Seems like a waste of an education to me, but what do I know? I'm not even in high school yet. Next year, if they let me in after all this crap. Don't get me wrong. I'm not dumb. I make mostly As and Bs, a C here and there so I don't look like I'm showing off. I'll probably go to college on a scholarship. Football, that is. You ever go to games when you were a Pirate?

On your page it says you graduated college in 2003. Dude, that's the year East Carolina was 1-11. That's just sad. I bet you walked around campus with your head hung low. Maybe that's why you do what you do. You've been through some bad times yourself. Me, I'm up and running and ready to go. Catch me if you can, Mr. Pirate man. Haz.

PS You got to admit I'm good with the lines. Surprised you, am I right? No lie. There's more to me than pads and cleats. You might think you've got me figured out, but dude, you don't.

To BarthWB@childrenscounselingservices. com, from StokesHP@ccs.k12. nc. us. Date: September 24th, 4: 36 PM. Subject: Workbook assignment.

Dear Dr. Barth,

What did I tell you? I came to play. Questions three and four completed and good to go. Document attached and all that. Haz.

Attachment: workbook questions three to four. Question. Is there a story behind your name? You ought to get my mom to tell it. She could go on for hours about how two E4s on their way to war took a detour to Hazard, Kentucky to get as far away from the army as they could for a day. They drove 280 miles from base to a place with a name that made my mom laugh. She sad her whole life had been hazardous up till then. "She downed the daily special and I fell in love," is how my dad told it. And me and Ty would fake heave every time. But it wasn't that bad. Not really. Knowing your mom and dad took leave to drive 300 miles across a state just to eat chicken fried steak and tell dumb jokes two days before they deployed to Iraq.

They got married three months after they got back, and I showed up nine months after that. My full and complete name is Hazard Pay Stokes. And I guess you could call it kind of a joke, but I like it okay. Means something extra you get for taking a risk, the way my mom and dad did. Two strangers out for a ride across one countryside and then the next. And now one more, I guess only this one don't have a name or a map. Sometimes I think they're not ever coming back.

Question. Write about an early experience with one of your parents. This one time, my dad emailed me a list of birds he might see through his barracks window at Camp Taji. I was this little first grader freak who didn't even know they had birds in Iraq. I thought birds were an American thing. Anyway, I memorized all the names just to make him proud the next time we Skyped. Jack snipe, great snipe, lesser grey shrike, whiskered tern, whimbrel-