“not to mention that according to the story, he is 601 years old at the time!”

Well, ya know, people didn’t start falling apart at the seams back then till they hit the ripe old age of 666.

Sarge
Jeez, a stroke and then run over a couple of months later? Just how many gods did you piss off? Glad you made it through though, and hope all is well with you now.

Except for that being a guy thing. Yeah, you’ll get killer looks for that, and you’ll deserve ‘em—just for being a guy! It’s your lot in life; the trade-off for not getting to bleed uncontrollably once a month.

My wife’s father’s family actually came from Fairfax, VA and around Silver Spring and other places in Maryland. For some reason his branch went to Ohio in the 1850s. My wife’s brother said there were the rumors of a “touch of the tar brush” and we found out that it was quite true. Look at my wife and sons and you’d never even guess, but it was, in fact true. In 1963, in that very room, I read in the newspaper about a VA couple who were exiled from the state for an interacial marriage. And, now it is a norm, at least for us. Some things HAVE changed for the better.

I didn’t mean to give the impression that we engaged in assaultive behavior. In neither of their families do they use physical punishment with their kids, and I taught my sons a lot better. I’ve seen violence in ways and quantities that made me want as little to do with it as possible, and communicated this to my sons. Our home is their home, and our contact is an embrace, a supportive hand. Well, as guys, my sons and I do get “the death look” but what married guy doesn’t, usually for the high crime of being a guy? At least once in a while.

My daughters-in-law are both non caucasian, one is a Blackfoot native American and the other is a black woman. Both are quite dear to me, and even the fundies in the family…against their will in some cases…like them. But the intermarriage thing really gets in the way.

My sons always got along pretty well, and the youngest married, then the oldest. They all came to the home-place to meet up, and my wife had been talking to the ‘girls’ telling them how our sons had rubbed along pretty well together. The youngest said, I did better than you! You married a Blackfoot woman, my wife is ALL black! This got him quite a swat from his wife. Oldest laughed, which got him the death-look and a swat from HIS wife. I didn’t laugh at all, but one of them swatted me, too. I asked “why?” and was told, in tones of disgust, “Well, you’re a GUY!” Physical chastisement because I was a guy? What ethos determined that?

We’re comfortable with our differences, they enhance rather than seperate us.

The remaining 25% (the only genetic variation which does exist) is actually fairly evenly distributed.