One of the legendary stories in our family is my older brother Robbie coming home from his first day of elementary school and my mother asked him “Where’s your seat in the classroom?” And he said, “I sit right behind the kid in front of me.” It’s a funny story, but it’s also interesting how […]
In David Brooks’s excellent book ‘How to Know a Person’ he tells a story about perspective. A man is standing on one side of a river and on the opposite side there’s a woman who sees him and yells, “How do I get to the other side?” The man looks at her and yells back, […]
The comedian George Carlin, who was one of my favorites, had a routine where he asked why people sometimes check the same pocket twice for keys that they can’t find. His question is “What do we think? The keys flew back in there between the first time and the second time?” The reason I may […]
I put on a coat this morning I haven’t worn in about a year and I found a quarter in the right front pocket. I was reminded of advice the personal finance Guru Susie Orman gave at one time, to go through all the clothing in your home and kind of recapture the money that […]
Although I like drinking coffee, I’m by no means an aficionado, and a friend recently sent me an article that sort of cataloged all the ways to make the perfect cup of coffee. I’m sure you’ve seen things like this before, and people go to great lengths to achieve that. One of the things I […]
When I was growing up, I had a great Uncle named Sam. He was both my great Uncle and also great as an uncle, who was 100% supportive of me and let me know it in many ways with his encouragement. If I did something that he thought was an especially good accomplishment, right afterwards […]
A friend of mine has a magnifying glass with a beautiful carved gemstone handle on it. She told me it belonged to her aunt who she loved very much, and to remind her of her Aunt, she keeps it on her desk. She told me that she uses it every day. I’m reminded of an […]
There is something interesting in the world of statistics called ‘The Birthday Paradox’. It is so named because if you ask the average person what size group you would have to have to find two people with the same birthday, meaning the same month and day, people often guess a very large number, like several […]
birthday, birthday paradox, statistic
I was out to dinner the other night at a restaurant with a large group, and three people who were sitting right next to one another noticed that they were each left-handed. And this led to this sort of instant bond, and they began talking about the trials and tribulations of being a left-handed person, […]
left, left handed, lefties
There is an old toy car that’s been in my family for decades and the way that it works is you put it on a flat surface and pull it backwards; that creates tension in a spring inside the car and that propels it forward. I think in life there are often situations where we […]
car, go forward, moving forward, toy car