WHY CAN'T I BURN MY LEAVES???

Intuition...! It's heralded by saints and poets, ridiculed by empiricists and scientists. So what's the deal here?

Intuition is a kind of quick and ready insight. Everyone experiences it at times; some seem to experience it almost all the time. These few folks are called everything from prophets to fools, from extra-sensory to extra-phony. We do know this much -- the US intelligence & military communities continue to probe the promised possibilities of these extraordinary sentient capacities.

However, until that time ESP claims fully materialize, people's intuition will continue to be a catch-as-catch-can phenomenon. And we will continue to find some things "counter-intuitive." At least five come to mind:

* It is counter-intuitive that football & soccer fans in a stadium watch the game rationally; but a few do, as they computer-chart the plays for later gaming

* It is counter-intuitive that adolescents make religion their first priority; but some of our greatest holy ones were youngsters

* It is counter-intuitive that poor people donate more to charity than rich; but they do, donating on average 5.6% of their income vs 2.1% among the wealthy

* It is counter-intuitive that narcissists will give more of themselves; but they do whenever measured in the percolation of creative ideas in group settings

* It is counter-intuitive for an adult to jump into and roll around in a lawn-full of autumn leaves; but if they are among those who grew up before the 1980s, they have this annual urge to do just that every Midwest October

The rest of you must understand something very important here. In those distant days, leaves were for crunching with your silly feet! leaves were for burning so that their pungent smoke could envelop you, body and soul! leaves were part of the mystical landscape to the Chicago Tribune's annual front-page cartoon affectionately titled "Injun' Summer!"

As everyone knows, these behaviors have been properly condemned by our empirical environmentalists. They have done this with all good intentions. Except perhaps their counter-intuitive decision that adults can never again be children.....