Why we like Peter

For the second time this week, we're going to quote Sunday's The New York Time Book Review.

In a review of Nicholas Dawidoff's book The Crowd Sounds Happy, critic Sam Stephenson notes how Dawidoff -- who's father went conversing-with-squirrels mad when the author was an infant -- turned to the game of baseball to add security to his life. "With the game's system of making a tangible record of every substantive event," writes Dawidoff, "there was a stability and order to baseball ... It could be known."

A lovely piece. But what made us post is the last paragraph:

Dawidoff writes, “When you are young there is the terrible inability to understand that it’s your deficits that will make others not only like you but feel close to you.” He learned this bit of wisdom, but I’m not sure many other adults have. If they did, then crowds might be happy.

We think this is why we like Peter.