If it weren't for pain I wouldn't know I'm alive.

Anderson Cooper and his mother are promoting a book about themselves that they wrote together. The book is called The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love and Loss. There is a companion HBO documentary.  This video pushes my buttons, like five all at once but I flicked off my button control panel and ignored my impulse to offer Charlie Rose a discount on industrial kneepads and resisted my impulse to tell the This Morning interviewer to give back my stained glass window because those stem from my own shortcomings and none of those impulses are helpful. I stuck it out and I must say I have a newfound respect. Anderson has a really cool mum. And so did I. This video makes me appreciate my mum even more. All my friends knew my mum is the best.

Comments to this video on YouTube are unkind. I like both these two people more by seeing it.