May 15th, 2017 – 12:41am PST:

I’ve heard it said that you can measure the worth of a man by the way he treats his mother. With that in mind, I certainly hope childhood is excluded from that consideration, because we put our mom through quite a bit.

I imagine the little things would begin to add up over time as well. My Mom and Dad struggled to find snacks and drinks for themselves that none of us kids liked. However, being the ravenous dinosaurs that we were, when the choice morsels were gone we’d inevitably begin eating and drinking the things we were less than crazy about, such as Diet Coke and bizarre types of Little Debbie’s snacks. If you’ve seen Star Trek TNG, you might recall that the Borg would modulate their shields to deflect phasers to avoid harm after being shot a few times. At that point, the TNG crew would verbally indicate that the Borg had adapted, meaning a new tactic was required. As result, when our parents noticed that even the less desireable snacks were getting eaten, they’d say between each other: “Richard/Susan, they’ve adapted!”