“In the fable the industrious ant was busy storing up for winter while the grasshopper fiddled and frolicked and frittered away his resources. According to Jim, most Conroys were ants. Jim and his brother Mike, both ants, had married outside their species by hooking up with grasshoppers. Their sister Kathy was an ant married to an ant; while brother Tim and sister Carol were ants with their provisions and grasshoppers with other people’s. “You, my dear,” Pat said with a glance my way, “are obviously an ant. I’ve never met an ant who wasn’t proud and pious about it. You’ll fit right in with my family.” “And what are you?” I teased. “Now what do you think? Unlike you stingy, miserly ants hoarding your last dime in your tight little fists, we grasshoppers”