Michael Heel

At a company picnic long ago, I was giving a lecture, as is my wont, this one on my theories about raising children. There were probably children misbehaving all around -- it was a picnic after all. Someone surmised that my children were probably not all that well-behaved either.

I looked up and saw my son Michael, then about 8, way across the field. I shouted: "Michael! Heel!". He stopped what he was doing, ran full speed directly toward me, whipped around my left side, stopped on my right side, and stood looking up at me.

"Defense rests," I said, and sent Michael back to his play.

People still remember that day, and Michael is 30-something now. If he had ignored me -- the other possibility -- there'd have been a brief laugh and it would all be forgotten.

Of course I knew something that the watchers did not: Michael's mother trained dogs.