GRAVETTE — Dear Editor,

For some reason I was thinking about that old and famous quote, “Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can never hurt you.” I believe this is not true - and I’m speaking from only personal experience.

Throughout life I have been affected too much by hurtful and malicious words, despite if they were intended or not. I ask myself why I let it hurt me so much and it was so clear I felt stupid.

Undesirable words hurt us because we really do care about the personwho said things that we could not forget minutes later and also because it takes us a while to realize most words come out of us because we did not think before we spoke.

I believe that half of mean and nasty words are spoken out of anger and not necessarily toward our target at the time. Well, we can’t take them back literally but we can apologize and hope we never do it again. I just feel that if we want respect we must first work really hard every day returning it.

Julie Chism-Cook

Opinion, Pages 7 on 11/18/2009