"I have often thought about this, and I have come to the conclusion that everything that I am is owed to you. You were like a gun that fired me a long way off, but the aim was yours. If you are proud of me it is because your aim was true." The General smiled. "I could have trusted you to come up with a metaphor that I would have understood. Did you know that a shell when it comes out of the barrel wobbles badly for the first part of its trajectory? And then it settles to a perfect arc? Perhaps your behavior when you were younger was your way of wobbling."