My Hope Is That The Fat Lady Hasn't Sung

Tom Friedman who perhaps speaks for me more than any other journalist thinks the fat lady has already sung. I hope he is wrong, but am fearful he has it right.

My life spans the period of time he talks about in his op-ed piece of February 20. My emotional immaturity as a teenager led to a very untimely pregnancy while still in high school. Yes, I know it is quite common today, but not at that time.

Thanks to an evening school training program by Grumman Aircraft, I became a machinist while earning my degree at Hofstra evening school. I bought a house at nineteen and had three children by the time I was twenty-one. Try doing that today.

Thanks to our post-WWII manufacturing economy, I was able to survive and eventually prosper. I think often today about the reality that I would not be able to do what I did then in today's America.