We are miserable...

According to Harvard's Professor of Happiness (now there's a sweet job), Americans are not the most content lot. Why?

- We live in a pressure cooker from birth - pre-birth for those wait-listed for the better pre-schools and daycares - to death.

- We try to cram too much into our schedules. In fact, Dr. Happy proposes, many U.S. parents don't enjoy spending time with their kids because they are simultaneously thinking of other things. (I suspect watching the Wiggles and Baby Einstein videos ad nauseum might be another reason.)

- We always want more and more material things. Yet affluence doesn't always go hand in hand with joy

That's something I could have told you from observing the, ahem, *charming portrait of grace and dignity* with the golf clubs barge his way through my apartment lobby this weekend - nearly taking out a woman who could have been his mother! Or a group of frowning ladies who passed my way as I wandered to Filenes and they to Louis Vuitton. I've seen those pool boys. Frowning really should be banned in Montgomery County.*

But I digress. Listen to Dr. Happy's 60 Minutes interview here.

* Note: In all fairness, there are many happy, well-adjusted people in my neighborhood. They are pleasant to live among. Yet not so fun to blog about as Mr. Golf Clubs. And it's been a while since this blog's seen a pool-boy joke.