lots of potential.

Officer Bowman was a good D.A.R.E. officer. It wasn't because he was a very nice man or because he loved kids or because he really believed in the program. It wasn't because he'd been a D.A.R.E. officer for years and years and years. It wasn't because he had a special connection with every fifth grader he came across. All of those things were true, but none of them were the reason that Officer Bowman was a good D.A.R.E. officer.

Officer Bowman was a good, no, a great, D.A.R.E. officer because he really didn't want you to do drugs. Not the general you, the specific you. He had a way of making you think that he didn't want you to do drugs because he knew that you were a good kid and that you had lots of potential. Officer Bowman believed in you.

I ran into Officer Bowman this weekend, older, greyer, only a little heavier. I recognized his voice first, a voice that sounds like a Southern Fred Rogers. Then I recognized his face and asked if he used to teach D.A.R.E. at Gamewell Elementary School. His face lit up as he told me that he knew he recognized my face and asked me my name. I told him and he acted like it had been on the tip of his tongue the whole time. Officer Bowman must have met thousands of kids in all his years as a D.A.R.E. officer, and it seemed doubtful to me that he would recognize me based on an eleven-year-old he knew twelve years ago. But then again, he was Officer Bowman, and he was so genuine that I thought maybe it was possible. We chatted only a little while, and I left feeling like Officer Bowman still believed in me, believed that I was a good kid and had lots of potential.