I find I do my best thinking early in the morning before I’ve gone vertical and after I’ve spent a restless night with one half of me thinking of important things to tell to my daughter while there’s still time and the other half is telling me she may be willing to listen to what I have to say, but probably won’t hear anything beyond the tone of my voice, and do I love her, because she is 33 years old and already has her own opinion and personal experience on just about topic you can name.

Today’s example of the pre-vertical, early-morning-productivity is the Detective Inspector’s Kit with eight or 12 glossy, four by six photographs of folks you have never seen before and a handful of thumb tacks to post the suspected perps mugshots on the wall of your office while walking back and forth shaking your finger at them and saying, “Aha!” when things have nor been going so smoothly in the course of the day in your personal life, and you need a sense of usefulness and success. I’ll bet you could sell a whole bunch of the Detective Inspector Kits real cheap.

Well, now you know why old folks say “Heh, heh, heh,” out loud in that sort of self-congratulatory was just when someone else was telling of the terrible time her sister was having making her daughter understand that some things were more important than others, and namely the ones I was just telling you about and weren’t you listening? Huh?

And so, this is what the “Heh, heh, heh” means when it comes from an elder person who has grown into it over a decades-long journey over many a bumpy ”But I told you ” and “Weren’t you listening?” means the best form success can take is in your trying to act in such a way that you can stand living with yourself and helping others to do the same.

For as the saying goes; There’s no place you can go to get away from yourself, and wherever you go, you are there. You know, you can pin your own picture on the wall and shake a finger at it. So, here comes “Heh, heh, heh.“ which means “Yeah, yeah. Been there. Seen that. Done that.”

And it really doesn’t matter.

Orrin Frink is a Kennebunkport resident. He can be reached at ofrink@gmail.com.