Pavlov programmed dogs to salivate when he rang a bell. Humans are programmed too. Walking, talking, toilet training, asking for allowance - it starts when we're children.
When we're children, parents try to instill those three, little words - please and thank you - into our vocabularies. Whenever a child wants something or is given something, parents ask "What do you say?" I wonder what...
Nostalgia is a longing for something far away or long gone - like the good old days. People talk fondly about times when things weren't rushed or stressed or expensive. Maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder - and the memory hazier. Back then - whenever then was - people didn't rush as much because they didn't have as many places to go. They stressed less because pharmaceutical companies...
"I love you" aren't the only three, little words in the language of love. There are others that say love just as clearly to me. Hearing "I'll do it", "I'll fix it" or "I'll make it" can turn any day into Valentine's Day for me.
Jay Leno can turn any night into a late night for me. When the alarm clock goes off the next morning, I hear myself saying three, little words, "It can't be" - but...
Colors talk, but you have to listen very carefully.
The most important thing Black says is you're not in the red. It also says tuxedo and mourning. It still says priest, but to street-clothes-wearing nuns Black says nunsense.
For most people Blue brags about eyes and sky and ocean. For others, like me, Blue bemoans sadness. Blue made me blue until we moved by the ocean. The house had a...
Burger flippers get training, so do crossing guards and street sweepers - but not parents. As soon as sperm fertilizes an egg, we become human sculptors. We're given approximately seven pounds of protoplasm to mold and manage, help and heal, teach and train, comfort and care for. I can't help thinking the world would be a better place if we were trained to do it - if we were trained to take...
Learning to walk before you run is what personal development is all about. As a child, I learned how to ride a bike with training wheels. Supposedly you never forget how to ride a bicycle. When I've occasionally ridden one as an adult, I've wobbled a lot before being convinced that was true. However, you do forget how uncomfortable the seat is.
When I got married, my personal development...
Where did all the people go?
When I go up and down the supermarket aisles, I see pictures of Paul Newman and Wolfgang Puck on almost everything. I've come to the conclusion both these men are missing and soon their pictures will be on milk cartons.
Supermarket cashiers are missing too. They've been replaced by self-checkout lanes. I'm supposed to scan the prices, weigh the produce and...
Where are all the Pet Rocks and the Beanie Babies and the Smurfs? The Hula Hoop got around and around in the fifties. In the sixties tie dyed t-shirts were to die for. By the end of the seventies bell bottom pants bottomed out and in the eighties big hair was literally big.
A fad is something that interests a lot of people for a short time. In other words, you can fool some of the people...
How do you recapture youth? People over forty want to know.
If you see a man over forty wearing an ace bandage, a brace or a cast on any part of his body, you see a man who's been injured in the battle against getting old. Whether his battlefield was a basketball court, a football field or a ski slope, the bad guys were younger. As this wounded warrior "becomes less young", there will be...
When people refer to the good, old days, I don't know if those days were better or just different. I know the cipher zero was different. It hadn't been confused with the letter "O" in numbers.
I remember candy bars costing ten cents. Not only were they cheaper, they were bigger. Both children and dentists were happier.
There was a time when candy and other foods were made without...
