Things I am grateful for:

• A wife that challenges and loves and deals with me.
• A brother that compliments me.
• A mother that taught me to see poetry in things.
• A father that taught me to take people as they are, not as I want them to be.
• A job that lets me play with things I want and make a difference at the same time.
• A country that protects me and tries (however badly) to protect the world.
• A world that, no matter how slowly or painfully, gets better as time goes by.

When I have children I will tell them that I can remember when:

• there was no such thing as a computer you could buy yourself.
• we all went to bed at night worrying whether the missiles would fall on us.
• cancer was thought of as a big single disease and nearly always killed you.
• I had a dog named BJ, and a cat named Panda.
• people actually dressed like that.
• I actually dressed like that.
• there were only four channels on TV and everyone watched Walter Kronkite.
• everyone knew who Walter Kronkite was.
• spam was something you ate.
• there were two Germanies, and you could get yourself shot trying to cross a street in Berlin.
• Russians were Soviets and Soviets were bad.
• their great grandmother stopped being a legend and started being a person.
• their grandmother stopped being a nutball and started to be a grandmother.
• their mother didn't know how to drive a car.
• the only people that got into space were Russians.
• everyone thought Poison was cool.
• everyone knew Poison was a rock band.
• people were actually dumb enough to trust the government.
• people were actually dumb enough to hate the government.
• their aunt was a little punk-ass kid that ran around with her fingers shaped like an "L" on her forehead.
• the iron curtain was something people feared.
• rubick's cubes drove everyone crazy.
• pop-rocks were dangerous.
• a Saturn V took off.
• a shuttle exploded.
• a web site was where a spider lived.
• Ronald Regan wasn't just the name of an airport.
• SALT didn't mean something you put on your food.
• Henry Kissinger mattered.
• we all thought it was a big deal when Russians and Americans met in space and didn't have weapons.
• I waited in line for hours to watch The Empire Strikes Back premiere.
• Bill Clinton was just the governor of Arkansas.
• Bill Clinton wasn't the governor of Arkansas.
• people thought it was bad that black folks and white folks would love each other.
• Barry Manilow was king.
• Donny and Marie was on Television.
• Evil Kenevil tried to jump the Snake River canyon.
• a turntable wasn't a musical instrument.
• they were called albums, were black, and more than a foot across.
• everyone used rotary phones.
• everyone drank from tin cans.
• if you loved a guy instead of a girl other people would try to kill you.
• I couldn't believe my parents couldn't remember what time their 2nd grade math class was when they were little.
• video games only cost a quarter.
• a 19 inch television was a piece of furniture.
• you recorded things on video tape.
• you had to sit through all the commercials.
• you had to get up to change the channel.
• a lady married a prince.
• that princess died.
• we thought that mosquito repellent was just something you always brought to little league games.
• their mother said "I love you" for the first time.