There's a place in the world for people who are calm and patient. There's a place for people with short fuses. There's a place for both the reverent and the irreverent, the conservative and the liberal, the skinny and the fat, the blonde and the brunette and the fan who thinks car racing's too slow and another who thinks baseball's too fast.

We don't all have to be alike. It takes all kinds.

Sometimes it bothers me when I see, in some subtle way, sameness being encouraged and even enforced. I hate to see some little kid medicated because he likes to run around wide open. I hate to see someone lose his (or her) temper and then have others say he (or she) needs "anger management."

In fact, as a general rule, I mutter something rude every time I hear it said that someone "has issues." Does that mean he's weeping uncontrollably and no one knows why? Then perhaps he should have "tissues."

I don't mean to demean physicians of various kinds. Or counselors. Or clergy. They're experts at what they do, and my opinions are most certainly amateur by comparison. I just think it's sad, though, when a person reaches some stage at which medication is prescribed to "adjust" or "modify" behavior.

It gives me the willies. Or a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest flashback.

My family is full of eccentricities. The matriarch was a workaholic. She went into a funk when she wasn't working, and when she finally had to retire, it spurred a downward spiral in her health that killed her in a tragically short period of time.

I tried to tell her she had to stay active, but if she listened, you couldn't prove it. Another recurring strain in the family psyche is being hardheaded.

One relative works extremely hard at times to avoid telling the truth, or at least anything resembling "the whole truth and nothing but the truth." I don't think she's ever been on a witness stand, but I'd sort of like to see her repeat that swearing-in litany. I know she'd at least have to pause and gulp or something. It's not as serious as it seems. She just doesn't like bad news and hides it until too late.

One sibling's hands get clammy. One relative forgot how to match clothes when he reached 65, and within a year, he'd gotten to where he absolutely delighted in matching plaids with stripes and stripes with polka dots.

Me? I'm absentminded. I'm way too fat. I don't get angry very often, but when I do, it's a doozie. I sometimes crack jokes that others consider a bit too irreverent. People say "hey, that's not funny!" but it's funny to me. Sometimes people are laughing when they say it's not funny, which is ... funny itself.

I suspect that most football coaches, if required to undergo "anger management," are also going to have to manage a few more losses. I'm glad the men who landed on the beaches at Normandy hadn't undergone "anger management" before they charged into the surf.

Life just works better if somehow we manage to solve our own problems. And it's happier once we accept the weaknesses we can't change ... and live with them.