Why I Love My Mother

(OK, so there are many reasons, but this anecdote says a lot.)

My grandmother taught Latin. My mother never studied it herself -- she majored in French literature. My brother, however, took Latin for several years, and my mom supervised a lot of his homework.

My mom is also a cautious person, verging on paranoid. She would never, *ever* leave a key over the door or under the mat or in one of those fake rocks.

So when she needed to leave a key hidden for my brother, she picked some unusual spot, and then left a note for him -- in *Latin*. It probably took her an hour or two to dig up his old textbooks and figure out how to say what she needed to say, but as she explained later, "Burglars don't read Latin."

(Of course, neither does my brother, anymore, so he spent a frustrated 20 minutes turning everything on the front porch upside down. He can't remember how -- or even whether -- he finally got inside.)

"Burglars don't read Latin." Heh.