Technically, the first was the result of a family move, not a school board machination. But from an 11-year-old’s perspective, I’m not sure there’s much difference. The changes were still enormous, and occurred through none of his own doing.

He was wrenched from the only home he had ever known, from the small public elementary school of 250 students that he had attended since kindergarten, from the neighborhood gang of boys with whom he had biked and played soccer and shared birthday parties practically since birth. He was torn from that comfort and safety and transplanted 270 or so miles north to Salisbury, a vastly different setting from the urban landscape he knew as his rightful place in life.

I will always be haunted by the memory of the sunny autumn afternoon when my wife and I told him we were moving from Decatur, Ga., to North Carolina.

There was a moment of stunned disbelief — as if we had just informed him he was the offspring of aliens who were now taking him back to Mars — and then, without a word, he whirled away from us, ran to his room and slammed the door.

Sometimes, I can still hear that slam.

Sometimes, I also hear a line from a John Berryman poem that is one of the few pieces of poetry that stayed with me from my college days: “Change is horror.”

For adults, who at least harbor the illusion of controlling their own destiny, change is hard enough. For children, who know all too well that someone else is always in control, it can be truly horrifying. It is the monster under the bed, the fearful, strange thing that you slam the door against, praying it will go away.

It rarely does, of course, and eventually you have to come out.

Eventually, that is what my son did. He came out and began asking questions about this place called Salisbury — Were there other kids there? Would they like him? Did it have a Dairy Queen? If he agreed to this horribly rotten deal, could he get a new Nintendo? — and thus began the slow process of change, of shedding the layers of one life and beginning a new one.

Eventually, the “for sale” sign went up in the yard. Eventually, the movers came and left, and the house suddenly stood silent and empty around us, the last box packed and gone.

Eventually, and all too soon, we said goodbye to longtime neighbors and their children and drove away with them waving behind us in the street.

Sometimes, I still see them waving.

That was three months ago — three months in which my son has discovered that, yes, there are other kids in Salisbury, and they are quite familiar with bike riding and baseball and Legos and Nintendo. Three months in which he has discovered that the teachers at Hurley Elementary are just as kind and competent as his teachers back at little Westchester Elementary in Decatur, although they did afflict him with a new mathematical procedure called “long division.” (Why they didn’t teach him that in Georgia, I’ll never know, but it does explain why they have trouble balancing the state budget). Three months in which he has discovered that ice cream tastes just as good here, and they sometimes even give you bigger scoops.

Three months in which he has discovered that, while making new friends, you also get the bonus of keeping your old ones through phone calls, e-mails, the occasional postcard and weekend visit.

Sometime during all of this, my wife said that our son had one day confided that, until this move, he had never realized his life could be so utterly changed in one instant.

Hearing this, I felt another pang of guilt at what I had taken away from him. There’s no denying that a piece of his childhood will always be somewhere else, back there in another house, on another street, in another school.

And yet, I think his early initiation into life’s capriciousness and whimsy may be an important lesson. Life doesn’t always give us the deal or redistricting we want. Life can indeed change in an instant, and I suspect the world will change even more quickly for him than for his parents’ generation. Events move at micro-processor speed now; we have Vick Bost moments. Rather than slamming the door on them, my son will need the self-confidence and inner sturdiness to face them head on.

Now, of course, he faces yet another redistricting. Instead of West Middle, he will go to Southeast Middle. Instead of West High, Salisbury High. He does not seem very concerned by it. As long as he’s with his new-found friends, he says, it doesn’t really matter to him. (He’s expressed little interest at this point in Salisbury High’s rumored fast cars and racy women).

I suppose you could say that’s simply because he hasn’t put down roots here yet. Or that he doesn’t have a sense of tradition. Or that he — and his parents — are oblivious to being a pawn of the school board.

Maybe. Or maybe, having weathered one seismic change in his young life, he’s gained a new sense of his own resiliency and fortitude. He’s learned that opening the door to change doesn’t necessarily mean slamming the door on former happiness. He’s learned that change sometimes isn’t the horror we make it out to be.

As redistrictings go, even he will admit that his first one is working out pretty well.

He especially likes the new Nintendo.