Well, I just deleted a LOOOOOOONG post because, as has been suggested previously, I think "sleeping on it" is good advice and I was getting WAY too specific regarding certain people. To put it bluntly without going back into a Thump post, let's just say you're now a bunch'a crotchity old farts ... this place hasn't changed any, YOU have. You're older (some of us have been hanging out together for almost 20 years if you go all the way back to the A/O days). You're more curmudgeonly and MUCH more thin-skinned than you were as "youngsters". Get over it. Tomorrow is another day and it's getting to the point, any day we wake up on the top side of the grass should be considered a good day.

That said ... I'll share a personal story here that some of you may want to think about. We all remember Tony (Gator) and he was very well liked and respected here. I would have to say, I knew him a million times better than anyone here and we became VERY close ... closer than brothers IMHO. That all changed at one point and we basically became more like mortal enemies than friends. Although NOBODY here (well, Cappy witnessed some of it in the early stages) knew the whole story, I was severely chastised for some of the things I said to him when we had our little sparring sessions on this site. Tony was a VERY lovable guy and nobody here had any reason at all to dislike anything about him ... but, like many of us, he had two sides and nobody here ever saw the other side of him the way I did. It started out with a gal he was living with and things went to shit pretty rapidly. I can't even begin to tell you how bad it got, but at one point, I even had him arrested and dragged off to jail kicking and screaming from his own bedroom. Even his family was behind me and actually encouraged me to follow through. BUT ... once he was released, the family pretty much turned on me (except for Curt) and sided with Tony because he was "family". Tony had problems and Booger is probably the only other one "here" who had witnessed them. Even HE got caught up in Tony's web at one point ... but that's another story that won't be told here. Let's just say, when it came to Tony, there was a Jekyll and Hyde that nobody here knew about, but I caught hell from a LOT of people here because all they knew was one side of the story (his side) and I was the bad guy as far as anybody here knew. That's the closest I ever came to leaving this place for good. But enough of that.

The only reason I brought that up is the fact that nobody ever knew how shitty I felt when he passed away before we ever mended our broken fences. He died while we pretty much hated each other. Just keep in mind, when things get nasty here it may seem fine today, but we're not getting any younger and some of you (us) may regret certain broken friendships that will never have the chance to be re-instated. NOT because you didn't want to ... but because it became impossible. There's nothing worse than going through the rest of your life wishing you'd had the chance to say, "I'm sorry, shake hands and go fishing!"

But ... on the flip-side ... there are some assholes that when they start shoveling the dirt on top of their casket, all you can think is "good riddance" ... in that case, ignore everything I said above. (sorry, but as you know, I always like to take BOTH sides of a situation into account)