Let's make this clear: responding to your teenage child's words with violence is NOT OKAY.

[jamesatemple]

117. I'm still in East Texas

but I never fit in with the folks with whom I grew up. I did my share of farm chores, vowed never to pull another cow's teats if I could keep from doing so, and moved to the Dallas area so soon as I could after college. Yet the bucolic environment that I knew as a child lured me back to a small East Texas town. I shall never forget the day that a boy of nine or ten years of age came into my small store, saw a piece of mail from the DNCC on my desk and asked, increduously, "Are you a Democrat?" When I replied that I was the last one in the county, he considered that response for just a few seconds and stated, "No you ain't! There's one down at the courthouse".

I nearly lost a close friend as the result of a heated discussion relative to George W. Bush's presidency (or lack thereof) and decided that winning an argument over politics wasn't worth the loss of a friendship. You see, my neighbors, good ol' boys and girls, will go out of their way to help others. And nothing I could say would ever change a mental attitude molded and steeped in the ideology propounded by little country churches; one merely accepted, never considered nor questioned. As one of the two last Democrats and the only atheist in the county, I'll continue to love and respect my friends and neighbors, keep my opinions to myself, and find some solace in visiting with cyber friends who share some of my ideas.