Thanks to all the girls named Ashley (there were so many of them!) and
all the other youngsters whom I cannot name for reasons of confidenti-
ality.

I was earning a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign when I conducted the research for this book. I benefited
from having as my advisor Susan Fowler, a truly gifted teacher. I was in-
structed in qualitative research methods by the very best: Robert Stake
(my dissertation advisor), Liora Bresler, and Alan Peshkin. Adelle Ren-
zaglia, Bob Henderson, Jeanette McCollum, Mickie Ostrosky, and
Tess Bennett were some of the other faculty who made the special edu-
cation department an intellectually vibrant, socially supportive, and
community-minded place.

Thanks to Jeffrey Tolley and Susan Davis for permission to reprint
two poems, and to John Harney for believing in the importance of this
book. At various stages of the writing, I received important editorial
comments from Sarah Hadden, Beatrice Borman Fink, Helen Zimmer-
berg, and Randall Miller, M.D.

When I was working on my dissertation, I used to call up Betty Zim-
merberg and read drafts of chapters to her out loud over the phone.
When she came to visit, we drove around Wabashy, and I showed her the
location of the baseball diamonds, the Karate School, the trailer parks,
and the Chinese buffet. She remains my most trusted literary advisor,
and in 1998 we began writing a new book together. The first chapter
was called "Our Wedding."

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