Life is a box of chocolates, after the coupon

I just read a short blog about what two of my grandchildren did. Go read it. I'll wait here for you.

Now that's the quality I love in people everywhere - I love it when kids or grownups (but especially kids) do something different and original.

But this blog will intentionally be rambling and random. You know you love it.

This past week I went to visit my best friends in the whole world, back in my old hometown of Wichita Falls. It was a short visit, centered around seeing the play that they are both in, Move Over Mrs. Markham, which is a British farce, only they Americanized it because most of the cast wasn't able to handle the accent. I found it most enjoyable (and it is still playing to sold out audiences), and all the more so since I played Mr. Markham in that play and in that same theatre many years ago, when I still had dark hair.

While there, I met their new outside cat, named Princess, who looks and acts so much like a cat I used to have that I couldn't help but pet it and coo at it.

We watched a movie together (not with the cat, but with the family) - "21," which is about some MIT guys doing a card counting thing in Las Vegas and making tons of money. There is a scene where the professor is explaining to the class about probabilities and how change affects them. So he describes a game show where you're supposed to choose the best door out of three. A student chooses door number 1. Now the professor reminds the class that the odds are 33.3 percent that he has chosen the correct door, but - now the game show host reveals that door number 3 is not the best door, and is therefor out of the equation. Would he like to change his mind?

The student says yes, and now he goes for door number 2, because its probability is now - I forget the percentage, but it is higher than the obvious 50%. And the professor agrees, and praises him, and now wants him to go be a card counter in Vegas. And I'm all like "what???"

I was willing to agree that there are probably some mathematical principles that are way beyond me - I know that there are other dimensions besides the four that are obvious to us - but this was nonsense, or so it seemed to me, and still does.

Suppose you have the same scenario, only this time you have two students participating. One chooses door 1, the other chooses door 2. The game show host takes door 3 out of the equation, as before. Do the two students now switch doors, because each door is now greater than 50% likely to be the correct door? I would love for someone to explain to me how 1 out of 2 can possibly be anything but 50%.

But back to the family of my friends. One of their daughters is almost certain to be a semi-finalist merit scholar or whatever you call that, which doesn't really surprise me because she is so brilliant. Both daughters are, of course, incredibly smart and visually attractive in the bargain.

After the show Thursday night, the plan was to hit the backyard hot tub, so as to enjoy the near freezing temperatures and high winds that Wichita Falls was providing for us. But the female half of the partnership had to back out due to work interfering - honest - and that would have left two guys in the hot tub, and that would have been too... you know. The G word.

It was probably all for the best, since I was getting sleepy already and I had to leave early the next morning for my long drive back to Houston.

I wonder if my life would have been any different if either of my two brothers had been creative enough to want to sell me on a treadmill while playing store?

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Update... OK, a computer geek in Midland explained it to me, though it wasn't clear in the movie. The game show host can't open your door, whether it's wrong or right. So if you have the correct door already, he has two doors to choose from. If you have the wrong door, however, he can only choose one door to open.

So your choice being wrong or right affects the door he opens, which in turn slightly affects the odds of your door being right.