What Will Your Mom Say?

    "By the time I got back home, my house was completely surrounded by print and broadcast reporters and camera crews.  As it turned out, none of the other Nobel laureates that year were serious about surfing, and "Surfer Wins Nobel Prize" made headlines.

    Friends began arriving with champagne, and the party began.  That afternoon I finally reached my mother.  I wanted to tell her to stop sending me articles about DNA, since I had now won the Nobel Prize for my expertise on that subject.  My mother often mailed articles from Reader’s Digest about advances in DNA chemistry.  No matter how I tried to explain it to her, she never grasped the concept that I could have been writing those articles, that something I had invented made most of those DNA discoveries possible.  She probably hoped that winning the Nobel Prize might enable me to be published someday in Reader’s Digest." 

– Wizard Academy Graduate Kary Mullis, on winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993, in his book, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field

What will your mom say?  Or, with my empathy, what do you imagine she’d say?

While you may never stand atop a stage in Stockholm, one day they will call you Laureate. 

Have you imagine-planned the party celebrating you?

How does it feel?  Who’s they?  Does it go on for two hours or two days?  Will local law-enforcement ultimately be called in?

What will your mom say?

But, most importantly, when will it happen and what caused the corks on the champagne bottles to pop?  What contribution did you make to better?

It strikes me goofy that business owners inquire about our services on a daily basis, yet have no answer to those last three questions.

What, specifically, will cause you to celebrate?  When’s the ceremony?

I’d love to be there. 

Can I bring my ma?