StormWarning

I have no problem believing Myrka's mother's attitude. From childhood on, my mother told me that, if I had a child, I wouldn't be welcome home until that child was old enough to drive. Since my mother never made empty threats, I knew that if I got pregnant, I would have to choose between my family and my unborn child. My mother also told me that I wouldn't know true hell until I become a mother. Anyone surprised that I chose to adopt a cat instead? Of course, after my child bearing years passed, the same woman told me that my failure to produce a child was because I was so self-centered. Go figure.

It wasn't Debbie's coffee to give away. The coffee -- and the cup, cream, sugar, and everything else associated with that cup of coffee -- belong to the hospital. Petty as it may seem, what Debbie was doing was outright theft. If she felt so strongly about making people feel good, she would have paid for the coffee herself. And if it wasn't worth HER own money to make someone feel better, than it wasn't worth the HOSPITAL'S money, either.

"It's not the size of the wand that pulls the rabbit from the hat. It's the skill of the magician waving the wand."

Watching James is like watching an Olympic gold medal figure skater perform the routine of their lifetime, a perfect demonstration of their skill at a time when it really matters. No one complains about how “unfair” it is to all the other figure skaters who have to compete against someone who excels at the sport; how those skaters, too, worked so hard just to make it to the Olympics only to have their dreams squashed by someone else executing a flawless routine. No one talks about what a waste of potential it is for a person to dedicate all that time and energy to skating when they should have been pursuing a more noble profession. The audience doesn’t hypothesize about the size of the skater’s bank account or comment about their esthetic shortcomings. We don’t think less of a gold medal skater for performing the difficult moves during the first half of the performance when their energy level is highest and when they’re at their best. What we should do is sit back and marvel at how James consistently excels at this game and at his wide range of knowledge. We should admire how he has developed a strategy for winning that we haven’t seen before and that we know will be copied by other contestants in the future. We should applaud him for not distracting his opponents with wild hand movements, smashing the signaling button, or mugging for the camera. James is wonderful, and I love watching him.