Some people are masters of bad timing. These are the people who burst into a party wearing a lamp shade and a hula skirt just as the conversation has taken a serious turn, a turn, say, toward a discussion of human rights or world hunger. Masters of bad timing buy high and sell low. They are the folks who try to rouse the hayriding young people to one more chorus of "She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain" just as the mood has shifted to the romantic. They telephone with questions about corrections to the minutes of the Christian Education Committee during the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl. Once, some years ago, they traded in their Edsels for Studebakers. They cannot help themselves; they are masters of bad timing.

The mother of the sons of Zebedee -- that is, the mother of James and Joh…