Being negative is easy. There will always be a downside to everything good, a hurdle to everything desirable, a con to every pro. The real courage is in finding the good in what you have, the opportunities in every hurdle, the pros in every con.

You can't make people like you under the best of circumstances, and you certainly can't make them like you while you're actively badgering them on what you perceive to be their failures of conscience.

Some people can work amid chaos or conversations, and some can't - and while there's no doubt an element of brain wiring to it, there's also the possibility of acquiring skills that improve your focus.

I believe in innocence until there's proof of guilt and all that.

There is a difference between your parents' not reporting to you everything they do and keeping secrets from you.

Of course the thoughts and awareness are there, but it's all incomplete and often fanciful - kids know there's something to know, and they fill in a bunch of the blanks with their imaginations if their parents haven't had the conversations and/or established themselves as sources of information. It's rare that the kids know nothing at all, and the somethings they do know are often only partially right or flat-out wrong.

Unfortunately, I think the expectation is that birthday girls don't pay.