I was talking with a friend recently and we got onto the topic of the tortoise and the hare, an old children's tale. The tortoise and the hare had a race, and of course the hare raced ahead. The tortoise kept on slowly plodding along, but there was no way it could compete with the speed of the hare. Part way along the race, the hare decided to take a nap, and while he slept the tortoise crept past him to the finish line.

Robert Fulghum wrote All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Well, for me it was a restaurant. There I learned what I called "Kitchen Aptitude," which started out as a level of competence in the kitchen of a large restaurant. It grew to become more of a general aptitude, the ability to cope with whatever life threw my way.