In the days when Abelson was a novice, Perlis once came to her as she sat hacking at the PDP-11. "What are you doing?", asked Perlis. "I am randomly rewiring a neural net that Sussman-chan trained to play Tic-tac-toe", Abelson replied. "Why are you rewiring the net at random?", asked Perlis. "I do not want Sussman-chan to conceive any notion that he doesn't need me", Abelson said. Perlis then shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?" Abelson asked her teacher. "I hate my job and my life and I want to die." At that moment, Abelson was enlightened.