All I wanted was something to drink, nothing more. It was a warm summer afternoon, and I’d been walking what seemed like a million miles  – that might be a slight bit of hyperbole  – to visit the sights of a well-known city here in this great country of ours.  As my thirst was getting the better of me, I happened upon a nationally known fast-food restaurant that was literally across the street from a huge tourist attraction  – not only was the location a prime one, there were no other fast-food restaurants nearby so competition was next to nothing.   When I stopped in, it was close to lunch time, so the restaurant was understandably busy with a mix of locals and tourists  – the line was one of the longest I’d ever seen for this particular “brand”.  As I was waiting to place my order, I noticed that there were four or five registers mounted at the counter, but the manager only had two of the registers running. That se...

When I was a young whippersnapper, I played a game with my fellow whippersnappers  – both boys and girls  – called Telephone Line.  I’m sure most of you have played this game in one form or another, whether it was called “Telephone  L ine” or something else.  You would sit in a circle  – the more people the better  – and one person would start the game by whispering a phrase like “my dog has fleas” into the ear of the person to her/his right (or left, depending on your political leanings).  The person in whose ear the phrase is initially whispered turns to the next person in the circle and repeats that phrase in a whisper, and the game follows in that manner until the phrase has been passed to the last person in the circle.  At that point, the final person in the circle repeats out loud the phrase as she/he understood it.   Ninety-nine times out of one hundred,  the  original phrase changes...