Robert Fulghum tells about meeting a young American traveler in the airport in Hong Kong. She was tensely occupying a chair next to his. Her backpack bore the scars and dirt of some hard traveling. It bulged with mysterious souvenirs of seeing the world.

When the tears began to drip from her chin, he imagined some lost love or the sorrow of giving up adventure for college classes. But then she began to sob ” a veritable flood of tears.

She was not quite ready to go home, she said. She had run out of money. She had spent two days waiting in the airport standby with little to eat and too much pride to beg. Her plane was about to go and she had lost her ticket. "She had been sitting in this one spot for three hours, sinking into the cold sea of despair like some torpedoed freighter."

Fulgh…