You're fine. If we all felt as much sympathy for strangers as we do for our own selves and families, nothing would ever get done.

There are some things for which pain is a logical consequence. If you don't wear your seatbelt, or you run into the street without looking, you run a very real chance of ending up in intense pain, so I think it's appropriate for parents to use a very small amount of pain (by spanking) as a consequence for those…

I really, really like what you've said. Parents who are in control of their anger can use spanking to provide a swift, logical consequence for behavior, since very young children aren't developmentally ready to connect a consequence days/hours away with their behavior right now. Parents who have issues (not their…

FWIW, what you describe is mild abuse BUT, chronic mild abuse is actually more damaging than clearly hideous torture. A kid who is chained to a radiator has an easier time drawing the line that says "what I suffered was not okay, no matter what I did to deserve punishment" and has his/her experience confirmed as…

oh gosh, are we including weird things we did as children with crushed?

beautiful! Like the "you make me want to be a better man" trope, except you actually, like, did.

I hit on my now- husband by oh so casually putting my feet in his lap.

I may regret asking, but wtf is a diet ménage? I am old and uncool and Urban Dictionary was most unhelpful.

I have died of the giggles from your comment.

damn near everyone thinks of him/herself as middle class. It's crazy.

When I was 5 or 6, we had some friends who kept a kosher diet, which was fascinating to me: they lived without bacon! I had no idea that Jewishness was anything but exotic and fascinating because I was a dumb culturally insensitive kid, so I did not understand why my mother was mortified when I announced, after…

fiber. You were a child who valued regularity.

if it was just the one story, I'd also give him the benefit of the doubt, because memory is weird like that. But he also claimed on a sports show that his favorite possession was a piece of the helicopter used in the mission to kill Bin Laden. :-/

It was more than that one story about being shot down. He also claimed to own a piece of the helicopter used in the mission that killed Bin Laden, and seriously embellished Hurricane Katrina coverage

that's not really true, it's a big part of Indian food, too.

I think not knowing what an enchilada is puzzles me more because so many varieties of frozen enchiladas exist. Like, Banquet and Stouffer's and Lean Cuisine have enchiladas in other parts of the country (I have only lived in TX, NM and CA) right?

I once waited on a table of very nice people who didn't know what okra was. We served fried okra (it wasn't a healthy or fancy place) so when they asked what the fried okra was, I said "It's okra cut into bite-size pieces, batter-dipped and deep fried". The lady said "Oh. But what is okra?". I tried explaining…

I cannot imagine most people spending $20 and putting on pants to go watch it ironically. This isn't Sharknado, which you could half-watch while snarking on Twitter and folding laundry or lounging in your underpants or whatever.

oooh that reminds me of a lie that I did not tell, but was party t: "No, officer, I'm not on anything. I don't do drugs. My eyes look unfocused because I have a congenital condition called [very real sounding bullshit]". Worked! Of course, she had passed all the field sobriety tests, but cop kept insisting the…

I literally gasped right now.