As a society we’ve progressed to a point where it is unacceptable behavior to knock someone down who is acting a fool. I teach my children to use their words when faced with a conflict. That’s what civilized people do. All that is fine and good except for one small thing; we’ve enabled the fools......What if people could expect a measure of instant justice when they were out of order? The acts of thoughtlessness would decline exponentially. If you give people license to be fools then you are left to deal with fools. However, if you put fools on notice then they’ll be forced to snap to attention and act right or suffer the consequences. Think of it as an adult spanking.

As for the young men whose company I keep (Why does it keep sounding likethat?), I try to teach them that every young lady is somebody’s sister or daughter with the potential to be somebody’s wife and mother. I ask them, “Would you wantsomebody treating your(sister/daughter/wife/mother) that way?” The response invariably comes, “No.” To which I respond that we should keep in mind that every girl is somebody’s baby.

...the word “fine”. As in “I’m fine”, “it’s fine”, “that looks fine”, etc. For a man the word fine has, tops, three or four meanings and that’s only because of the fairly recent edition of “Dang, girl! You look fine!” Otherwise “fine” would range somewhere between satisfactory and of superior quality. For a woman the word “fine” has like seventy meanings and depending on voice inflexion can actually mean ‘If I’m questioned again I’ll stab you in your sleep’.

If asked for an opinion we’ll say what we think. And by “what we think” I mean the answer that comes to our mind first, seems most logical and requires the least amount of effort to articulate, while getting us in the least amount of trouble. Really that’s what our communication boils down to.

Kids don’t act right. Sure it’s embarrassing when it happens but any reasonable person won’t fault a parent when a kid throws a fit. However, when a child doesn’t act right and a parent doesn’t act at all then we’ve got a problem.Parents get up off of your rears and parent your children. Please I beg you stop these little bedlamites from running amuck at church, in restaurants, at the movies, in the store or really anywhere that I may be.

Are bacon and chocolate the foundation of a good meal? No, everybody knowsthat is a deep fryer and/or gravy. However, I have long held the notion that you can't name a food that I can't improve by adding either bacon or chocolate.

America, I know we have our problems. I realize that the scale and our waistlineare foremost among them. I’m willing to make concessions, I really am. I drink, and prefer, skim milk. I’ll take water packed tuna over oil packed tuna any day. I can stomach low-fat ranch or I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Anything. I’ll even look the other way on sugar free ice cream (believe me that one hurts), but I’ll be darned if I’m gonna let somebody take my delicious delicious pig fat from me. I’d rather die.

Our plump predicament comes from the way we think. In America life hasbecome a daily quest for instant gratification. Do we think about the long term? Rarely. We ask ourselves, “What sounds good?” That’s where we get into trouble focusing on what we want rather than what we need. Then we invent new ways to satisfy ourselves.