I found this the other day in the March/April, 1999, issue of Backwoods Home Magazine, in Massad Ayoob's column:

"...I was nine years old and in fourth grade when I figured out that if you were an optimist, the best you could ever hope for was that things would go exactly as planned, and the rest of the time you would be bitterly dissappointed. However, if you were a pessimist, the worst that would ever happen would be that things would go exactly as planned, and the rest of the time, you would be pleasantly surprised."

-- GA Russell (garussell@russellga.com), May 16, 1999