When I was a child, I knew where the wild things were. I was one of them.

When I read Maurice Sendak’s classic book — again and again — as a child, that was one of the most important things I took away from the text. I was a wild terror of a boy, after all. I never got sent to bed without supper, but I certainly got sent to bed, often and deservedly, for being so . . . «rambunctious» was the word my mother used when she was feeling generous. She could just as easily have yelled that I was a «WILD THING!» as Max’s mother does. And I was one.

And I didn’t care that I was annoying my mother, either. Someone might look at my childhood and adolescence and suspect that this was a subtler lesson I learned, whether I knew it or not: that parents…