true story

     I've known one young man who was way smarter than I am.  I think his name was Fred Meisel.  He lived just down the street from us in high school.  He scored 792 veerbal, 800 math on his SAT's.  He dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade ... to matriculate at Yale.

      The last time I saw him, he and I were sitting with Melissa Bartlett on her front porch, on a lazy spring day, enjoying the balmy evening in conversation.  I had dropped out of college to search for a reason for life.  But he said to me, "You are wasting your life.  You should be using all the talents you have to do some good, something worthwhile, with your life."

     Next day he got on a plane to go back to New Haven for graduation.  The plane went down in L.I. Sound and everyone on it was killed ....