AN INTERESTING LAMENT: Sometime during early childhood, all of us come to realize that the world doesn’t exist to keep us warm, dry and comfortable. If you had a good mother, it may have seemed that way for the first year or two. (This would be a good time to wish all of you maternal types out there a Happy Mothers Day). But as with most sales transactions, that was just a special introductory offer. Things soon get down to the basic give-and-take.

Another thing that you soon realize as a child is that not everyone in the world is interested in what you’re interested in. You can usually find someone who shares one of your interests, and once in a blue moon you find someone who can talk about 2 or 3 things that are near and dear to your heart. But it’s just about impossible to find anyone who completely shares your interests. Thus, you usually wind up marrying someone who, for a little while, claims to be absolutely fascinated with you; but in reality, she or he finds many of your interests to be trite and meaningless. Ah yes, that limited-time introductory offer, once again.

Not much to be done about it. It’s just a shame that in this lifetime, there’s little to no chance that someone will come along, get to know you, and say, yes, I understand why glass marbles and civil war history and butterflies and Victorian novels and touring Australia and starting a software business turns you on. I see how it all comes together. I know how you feel. Yea, it’s a shame that none of us are every completely appreciated here on earth. Maybe that’s what makes us all so unruly and uncivil sometimes. We all need something from each other that no one is able to give.

Oh well, maybe in another life.

BUT ON THE BRIGHER SIDE OF THINGS: The “wiki” movement on the internet is one of the brighter things happening out there today. Just when it seems as though every site on the internet wants you to pay $15 per month to use it, the wiki people come along and set up good, free stuff on a volunteer basis. Do you remember when the Encyclopedia Britannica web site was free? That sure turned out to be a “special introductory offer”. But we still have the Wikipedia, which gets better and better every day and is still completely free. It’s at www.wikipedia.org. Whatever you are interested in, there’s probably something about it on the wiki. And if not — then write it yourself!