Take a stand.

I had an odd thought. People say "sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me," or roundabouts of that. Odd thing is, I find it to be quite the opposite, but in an abstract sort of way. For the point of discussion, let us say that we're in medieval times. Do you have your imagination cap on yet?

Ok, so in the times of the medievals, the primary man versus man weapons were swords and arrows. Therefore, one would wear armor to go into battle, to prevent getting mauled by the aforementioned weapons, and if you armored up enough, you'll be fine, unless you get nailed REALLY hard.

Now, let us say you're going to go hang out with Sir Dancelot, who happens to be your friend. Would you wear armor? No, that would be silly; this guy's your friend. If you have no armor, this guy could take you out with a pencil, but you would assume him not to, because he's your buddy.

Here's the defining moral parallel: Let us cheesily say that the arrows, swords, etc. are not the nicest or uplifting of words, and the armor is some sort of unknowingly armed emotional armor. When you go to talk to someone you know is a jerk, you won't usually be hurt by them unless he or she happens to be surprisingly wittily evil. But, if you go to talk to a friend, they could just whip that pencil of theirs around too fast and put out an eye or something (or even unkowingly clothesline them thinking they're Chevis, in odd cases :-D).

Maybe I'm the only one that does this. I don't know, because I'm just me, and I tend to differ just oh-so-slightly from the standard teenage population. But my main point was that, in the case of a friend, it really should be "sticks and stones might break my bones, but words annihilate me."

Oh, and speaking o' friends, it's Chevis's birthday today, so y'all go hop over to http://snowboarder.mindsay.com/ and wish him a happenin' birthday.