Ben Stein's Father's Day Gift: "When You Weren’t Looking, They Were Working"

I've always liked Ben Stein, the writer, actor and economist perhaps best known for playing the uber-boring economics teacher in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1986) though I haven't always liked his New York Times columns, "Everybody's Business." Too often, I think they don't cover "everybody's business."

However, his column, "When You Weren’t Looking, They Were Working,"is particularly good and meaningful to me, given the loss of my father last Thanksgiving. Stein's column is about the fact that business can be difficult, and that children don't usually understand what their parents go through to make everything possible, and that children should be grateful to their parents.

"So start now, and make it a habit to be grateful to your parents..." Stein ends his column, noting, "How I wish I had done more of it. Now it's too late (since his father died in 1999) -- but it's never too early."