I recently met with a willing, would-be executioner: a man who said he would gladly kill former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Hillary too, of course.

At first, I figured he was joking. He assured me he was not.

“I think you underestimate the number of people who would pin a medal on me,” he said. Later, over email, I asked him to clarify. He wasn’t actually serious about murdering anyone, was he?

“My disgust for the conduct of the Clintons and Obama while they were in office is such that after they were tried and convicted, I would be glad to serve as their executioner. Preferably by driving over them in my car, several times,” he replied.

I got to know Edward Chapman, a 75-year-old retired federal employee who worked for the Department of the Army in St. Louis, when he started writing to me years ago. He was always polite and good-natured in his responses to my columns. Initially, I responded to his notes because he seemed genuinely curious about my ideas and beliefs, and he could disagree without being disagreeable. I knew we were on opposite sides of many political issues, although I had no idea of the depths of his animus toward former Democratic presidents.

He has emailed me at least a couple of times a month for several years. Once, he didn’t even know where to begin in taking down an argument I had made for better gun control regulations, so I asked him to send me articles he wanted me to read. Weeks later, I received a package with a half-dozen pro-NRA articles and a used copy of a book by John Locke. After I wrote about my disgust for the Trump administration’s family separation policy, he was so incensed by my position, he said, that he’d taken a day to cool off before writing me.

When a producer from StoryCorps reached out to me this summer about sitting down with a reader for a face-to-face, recorded interview, I immediately thought of Chapman. StoryCorps is a nonprofit that records interviews that can be submitted to the Library of Congress or aired on NPR. Its mission is to “preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people.”

Going into the interview, I was inspired by the spirit of bipartisanship at Sen. John McCain’s recent funeral, and ready to find some common ground. Then, when we finally met, Chapman’s first question to me was whether I actually practiced Islam, which he considers one of the greatest evils in the world.

There may not be as much common ground here as I had hoped.

He informed me that he was convinced that “raghead Obama” is a Muslim. I asked if any evidence could convince him otherwise. He said that the Pope himself could vouch for Obama’s Christianity and Obama could present Jesus to him, and he would still believe Obama was a Muslim. (For the record, Obama is a Christian.) I’d had no clue that my loyal reader was so deeply committed to conspiracy theories -- although, a 2016 poll found that two-thirds of Trump supporters believe Obama is a Muslim, so maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised.

I told him about the boy in seventh grade who called my mom a “raghead” every day after school. Chapman said I was less of “an Islamic” in his eyes than Obama.

I encourage my children to talk to people outside their bubble of those who agree with them. It’s the only way to get a better understanding of the world we live in. But is there value in talking to people who reject reason and evidence and embrace bigoted views of others?

I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is that I ended up spending two hours talking to someone I normally would have written off. I discovered we both care deeply about protecting the environment, and that both our lives have been touched by Alzheimer’s (his wife, my grandparents).

I learned how easily people can compartmentalize their views: Chapman seemed completely sensible on certain topics and unhinged on others.

I seemed to puzzle him the same way. He said I’m a contradiction to him, because I’m a Muslim woman who seems like an intelligent, American suburban mom, whose writing he enjoys. How can this be?

I am perplexed how a man who would take joy in killing Obama, and who believes newspapers distort or hide the truth, could appreciate anything I have to offer.

We each must hope that we can influence the other in some way. More than “making connections” or recognizing our shared humanity, I think we both realized the limits to understanding.

A dear friend expecting her second child recently confided that she had lost sleep wondering if she would be able to love her second as much as she loves her first. My first impulse was to laugh and tell her she was being silly.

Until I remembered that I had worried about the exact same thing when I was expecting my second. In fact, I had struck a deal with my husband, saying he would need to love the second since I would clearly not be able to match my feelings for our firstborn.

Needless to say, I was wrong.

In that spirit, here are seven myths about having a second child. Full disclosure: I fell for all these misconceptions myself.

Myth 1. You will not be able to love the second child as much as the first.

It may not happen all at once, but trust me, it happens. For many parents, the intensity of feeling for our firstborn can be startling. I had never experienced that depth of emotion before, so I couldn’t imagine that it could happen twice. It can be shocking to realize your capacity for love.

Myth 2. It will only be twice as much work to add another child.

No, the workload will increase by a greater multiple than two. Having to constantly meet the needs of two children, especially if they are close in age, can feel overwhelming, especially in the beginning. Unlike with the first baby, there’s always another little human who needs your attention, so it’s not as easy to catch naps when you are sleep-deprived. It’s also normal to worry about neglecting the older child, who all of a sudden seems so much older. But a little independence and responsibility, even for a toddler, is a good thing. There will be days that pass in a blur, but it does get easier.

Myth 3. What worked with the first will work with the second.

Yes, you are more experienced and, hopefully, more relaxed about parenting the second time around. But just because the first was a great napper doesn’t mean the next one will be. Just because the first loved veggies, don’t expect another adventurous eater. Intellectually, we know each child is different, but it still feels like a rude shock when you realize that your firstborn’s excellent sleep habits likely had little to do with your superior parenting skills, since those same skills aren’t doing squat this time.

On the upside, the challenges you faced with the first may never arise with the second.

Each child will reach milestones at different points. One will sit up, walk, talk or read sooner than the other. Avoid jumping to conclusions. Remember that there is a wide range of normal, and if he or she falls within that scope, relax.

Myth 4. You will be just as diligent with the second as you were with the first.

The truth is there will be fewer baby pictures (forget the baby book right now), fewer early childhood activities and less one-on-one time. The reason is rather simple: There’s more to do but no additional time to do it. Plus, in the wisdom you’ve accrued from child number one, you realize that making flashcards for a baby is a largely worthless endeavor. But while the second child may get less of your undivided attention, he or she gets a better, more experienced parent.

Myth 5. You’ll lose the pregnancy weight as quickly as you did with the first.

Perhaps if you’ve got a team of support staff, including a trainer, housekeeper and cook, you can expect to get that pre-baby body back quickly. For the rest of us, it takes longer. Even if the extra pounds melt away relatively quickly because of nursing and lacking the time to eat proper meals, things will not look quite the same. Um, ever.

Myth 6. You won’t have a favorite.

Oh, yes, you will. It will change depending on which child is making your life slightly easier that day, week or month. Don’t feel guilty about this. You should (and will) love them equally, but there will certainly be times when you like one more than the other.

Myth 7. My child will finally have a playmate.

They may seem more like mortal enemies than best buddies, at least for a while. Get used to squabbles, whining and accusations: one child claiming the other always gets away with everything, is loved more and never gets caught being bad. There will also be, however, moments of great friendship and hilarious overheard conversations between the two. Those make up for all the “He’s so annoying!” and “She’s touching my stuff!”

I still believe the greatest gift you can ever give a child is a sibling. Underneath the bickering and fighting is a very deep bond of a shared childhood and family experiences -- things only a brother or sister can understand.

For years, my husband has been waiting to share this cinematic moment with our son.

He is a superfan of “The Godfather” trilogy, having watched the films at least a hundred times. When our son turned 13 this spring, the teenager started asking when he would be allowed to watch the series with his dad. They decided, a few days before school started, that the time had come.

While I also appreciate the magic of these classic films, my husband’s devotion is on another level. He has most of the dialogue memorized, has read all the backstories and can answer just about any trivia question related to these three movies. I think 13 is a little young for such an intense story, but I figured my husband would be discussing the themes along the way.

This would be their thing.

It took them about 10 days to get through the series, and each night I could overhear the annotated viewing experience my son was getting. I also heard a fair amount of indoctrination, as my husband posed the question, more than once, about whether this was the greatest film of all time. (There is one correct answer to that question.)

Afterward, I asked my husband if he’d had to fast-forward the movies during the inappropriate parts. There were only two brief, racy sex scenes in nearly nine hours of viewing, he said. It’s a story about the mafia and gangsters, so it’s rife with killings, beatings and violence. And yet the violent scenes from decades ago are less gory and graphic than what would earn an R-rating today.

He was more concerned about the scenes depicting domestic violence.

“I didn’t want him to see Michael Corleone slapping his wife or Carlo hitting his wife,” my husband said. He mentioned at both these moments how deplorable these actions were, just to reinforce the message to our son.

There are certainly some relevant life lessons apparent in the trilogy: Crime doesn’t pay. It’s hard to extricate yourself once you are entrenched in a criminal enterprise. Be careful who you associate with. You can’t demand loyalty from people; you have to earn it.

Even though there were no political discussions around their viewing, the timing couldn’t have been more apt. Recently, the country witnessed the unfolding of an extraordinary political scandal in which the president’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pled guilty to crimes he said he committed at the behest of then-candidate Donald Trump.

This is uncharted territory. Perhaps a cinematic masterpiece can shed light on a powerful family patriarch embroiled in payoffs to porn stars and models, betrayed by his fixer, threatened with the collapse of his dynasty.

A Wall Street Journal report described the scene when Trump originally said he didn’t know about the hush-money payments to the women, and referred questions to his attorney.

“Mr. Cohen, who that night was staying aboard the yacht of Trump donor Franklin Haney, which was docked in Miami, grew irate on the ship soon after Mr. Trump made his remarks distancing himself from the Clifford payment,” the Journal reported. “Mr. Cohen was swearing loudly as others on the boat were sipping their drinks, the person said.”

Francis Ford Coppola could have directed that scene.

I would argue that “The Godfather” is ultimately an epic narrative about family. I asked my son about his impressions of the story.

“It was compelling,” he said. “It was pretty dark, but very good.”

When I asked him if he had any takeaways from the movie, my son quoted Al Pacino’s character in “The Godfather: Part II”: “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

In 2018, art imitating life.