At an early age, I started my own paper route. Once I saw how you could service people and do a good job and get paid for it, I just wanted to be the best I could be in whatever I did.
Joe arridy had an iq of 46 and is known as the "happiest prisoner on death row. He went into the gas chamber with a smile. It turned out he was innocent.
If our friends' idealizations of us need the corrective of our own experience, it may be true also that our own sordid view of our lives needs the corrective of our friends' idealizations.
