Let me ask you to do a little remembering today. I don't know specifically what it is that I'm asking you to remember: that will vary with each individual. In general, though, here is the assignment: I want you to remember "the good old days."

What comes to mind when you hear that phrase? What time? What place? What period of your life and experience first occurs to you when you hear a reference to "the good old days"?

When our oldest daughter was just five years old, she was sitting with my wife and me watching some of our home movies from the time when she was a baby and a toddler. After we had watched for a while, she sighed wistfully, and said, "I wish I could be a baby again!"

At that moment I recognized that you don't have to have lived very long — you don't have to be very old — …