How I Learned to Be Useful

"If you don't want to be fired, i learned that you had to be at least more useful than the next least useful person," he says. "So well, so then i was employed, and that was good. It kept me out of trouble, and i had some money, and i got to be treated like an adult, which i really, really liked." 'My mother could be a pretty vicious judge of useless, foolish s as well,' he adds. "'We weren't very much rewarded for giving up easily' is what my father used to say.'"