9 to 5 - Follow YOUR Yellow Brick Road

Yesterday I had one of those moments of environmental nanoterrorism when I sat in my car, engine idling, for at least seven minutes outside my house. It was the BBC World Service's fault. I got home and I just had to listen to the end of the Outlook interview with Sir Ken Robinson.

He has a book out about inspiring people to follow their personal passion, called The Element.

I've long ago stopped reading that kind of book, but the interview was fascinating. Sir Ken was struck down with polio as a child, and then his dad became a quadroplegic after an accident at work.

But the really interesting part was when he retold a story he heard at a book signing somewhere in the US. I'm telling it the way I remember it, so don't sue me if I get some details wrong.

A guy came up to Sir Ken to get his book signed and said that, as a child, he'd always wanted to be a firefighter. No doubt thinking this was just a normal childish phase, I guess most people indulged him until he got older. Then he had a high school teacher who told him it was a stupid idea and that he should go to college. The guy became a firefighter and saw his teacher again - when he saved his life, and his wife's life, after they had a car accident.

And here's the punchline, in true, euphemistically-polite American style:

"Well," said the firefighter," I guess he thinks differently now."