Have you ever wondered where your values were formed? Had a flash back the other day. A homeless man stood at the COSTCO driveway with a sign asking for money to feed his family. Anything would do it said. I looked into my pocket but had no change. I looked into my wallet and had several $20 bills. Did I really want to give him twenty dollars? And then a picture flashed into my head. It was of an old lady with a black dress on, a white apron, and a red bonnet. I immediately asked my wife to pass him the twenty from my wallet. Does anybody know who this old lady was? She was a character in one of my early picture books. The old lady had just baked a pie and sat it on her window sill when a hobo (homeless man) smelled the pie and asked the lady if he could have some. She said no but she would bake him a smaller one. But when the pie came out of the oven it was larger than the first one. She didn’t want to give him a bigger pie so she tried again. The next pie was even larger. She tried a third time and it was even larger. So she said “No, I can’t give you any. Get out of here.” The homeless man stomped his feet and she became smaller and smaller until she turned into a woodpecker. He said to her that from now on she would have to go and peck the trees to find food. Now is this where my value of self-sacrifice comes from? I don’t want to become a woodpecker? But from now on I am keeping some dollar bills in my wallet.