Today is my youngest brother’s birthday. He came home in a Christmas stocking, and his five older brothers and sisters have been telling stories about “The Legend of Patrick” ever since. One of them makes a great metaphor, in the cyberpoetry blog called Dan’s New Leaf. 

You see, I grew up on a farm, and our house was 30 yards from a creek which, because we were 3 miles north of the Illinois River, was about half as wide as most rivers. And in the spring, it could be dangerous, as the dirty thawing water rushed by. So once our little brother was old enough to walk around, my mom and dad decided to put a fence between the house and the creek.

As the legend goes, when my dad finished the north end of the fence, he looked up to see that Patrick had climbed over the south end.

A false sense of security is the worst kind of security. We all have controls that no longer work. Let’s find them and take them down.

And yes, we eventually took that fence down.