“I’m going to go run.”

As my son pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and put his earphones in, there was a sense of anxiety that washed over me. What if others didn’t know who he was? What if someone tried to yell at him to stop, but he couldn’t hear them over his music? I let my younger sons roam the neighborhood, and I never gave it a second thought. Sometimes they were gone for hours at a time, and I didn’t fear for their life.