In the foggy depths of my mind, the memory of an important lesson learned rests.  As with all things, my notion of this memory has been altered with time and my changed perspective of my past-self.&nsbp; The lesson, however, remains unchanged: sometimes the cost of a thing exceeds it's worth, and one should know the costs well.  This lesson is known by all successful people, and it is because of this memory and lesson, at least in part, that I am who I am.

     When I was about 11 or 12 years old, my cousin, Darrell, taught me to make a particular type of paper airplane which he called the "horse."  The complexity of constructing this type of paper airplane was about 20 steps, and could be constructed with only a sheet of paper and a pair of scissors in about 10 minutes.  The plane itself was actually a glider and stayed afloat for a considerable length of time.  If a plane were to be thrown upward at exactly the right angle, it would float from a considerable altitude with a completely unpredictable destination.  This was quite amusing to me as a young boy with a developing and still quite active imagination, and many afternoons I could be found in the vicinity of my home in Texas flying a paper airplane, often until dusk.

     On one lazy Tuesday around the time the sun was dipping below the dense patch of pointy trees in the distance, I was outside exercising my imagination with my favorite style of paper airplane.  This particular day I was testing my ability to accurately control the plane's destination by launching it at different angles.  I soon became confident that I could control it, and even make it do simple tricks, like loops and "U"-turns.

     I was very confident indeed, and so I decided to perform another test, this one over the roof of my one-story house.  I would like to believe that it did successfully make the "U"-turn I had intended, but it did not make it off the roof.  It was stuck there, this not being a particularly windy day, I had two options: make another one, or try to retrieve it.  I, of course, chose the latter as I thought it would be take less time.  This was not altogether a bad idea since I could just grab a ladder and pull it down.  However, this was not what I chose to do, after all getting a ladder takes time, and there was a perfectly good yellow 1970 Opel GT parked in the driveway to use as a springboard.  As it turns out, that was a bad idea.  I came crashing down, but managed to break my fall with my hands, causing my wrists to fracture... for a paper airplane, and to save a few minutes.

     Thinking back on that time, I would have rather spent the few minutes retrieving a ladder, or even built another paper airplane than endured the cost -- 6 months in a cast and several hours of pain.  The lessons learned from this experience are painfully etched into my mind, but the memory has been tinted with time.