Growing up in CT, I had three brothers who were *ahem* aggressive to say the least. They never used slurs like n*** or f*** or dy** because my parents would have killed them, but I digress.

My next door neighbors had three little kids. At the time, I was closer in age to the mom than the kids, so we became friends. One day, their oldest was pushing around the middle one, screaming, "I hate you, you guest", "You're mean, you guest".

Well, we figured out that the child, about 7 or so, had heard her mom run around in a frenzy doing what I now call the 'ten second tidy'(after the Big Comfy Couch) when unexpected company was coming.

In other words. "Hurry up! Clean up your toys, GUESTS are coming".

Or, "I HATE uninvited GUESTS".

You get the idea.

The power of invective. The power of words. An innocuous word becomes an epithet. Imagine the force behind a word that starts out as an epithet.

What power we have to stop the epithets.

As we move forward, let's choose our words carefully. Little pitchers and all that.