J. Davy Crockett III

There is a line from a poem by William Ross Wallace (1819–1881) that you have probably heard. He wrote, “For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”

Seeing a tattered American flag displayed on the home next door after a windstorm, my aged father-in-law—a Colonel retired from the United States Air Force—set out to offer his neighbor a replacement for the damaged flag. I accompanied him as we met the neighbor, a short, portly man with white hair and a big smile. He had not realized that his flag was in tatters, and he graciously accepted the new flag as it was offered.

The well-known cliché “The early bird gets the worm” is often followed by another time-worn truism, “The second mouse gets the cheese.” While we chuckle at these mental word pictures, they do contain a grain of truth that applies to everyone.