What was life like in the colonies? Probably the best word to describe it would be "colonial".

France: As a professional journalist, I like the idea of a society where it is considered an acceptable occupation to basically sit around and drink.

Those who can't laugh at themselves leave the job to others.

Babies are equipped at birth with a number of instinctive reflexes and behavior patterns that cause them to spend their first several years trying to kill themselves. If your home contains a sharp, toxic object, your baby will locate it; if your home contains no such object, your baby will try to obtain one via mail order.

I haven't been able to slam-dunk the basketball for the past five years. Or, for the thirty-eight years before that, either.

My current computer, in addition to 'DOS,' has 'Windows,' which is another invention of Bill Gates, designed as a security measure to thwart those users who are somehow able to get past DOS.

During bomb drills, we students were told to crouch under our desks. Apparently the desks used in classrooms in the fifties were made of an exceptionally missile-resistant variety of wood. During the Cold War years I often wondered why it never occurred to our defense planners to protect the entire nation from nuclear attack by simply covering it, from sea to shining sea, with a huge Strategic Classroom Desk.