In 1975, a small­ish bay foal with a weak blood­line and a slight­ly back­ward arc at his knees was born at a thor­ough­bred breed­ing farm in Lex­ing­ton, Ken­tucky. Months lat­er, in Jan­u­ary 1976, my son was born in Los Angeles.

On my son’s fifth birth­day, his stom­ach was dis­tend­ed and he com­plained of nau­sea. Our pedi­a­tri­cian mis­di­ag­nosed it as a diges­tive prob­lem. When the swelling spread to his face, arms, and legs, a team of doc­tors iden­ti­fied his ill­ness as a rare con­di­tion where the kid­neys strip pro­tein from the sys­tem. With­out pro­tein, water seeps from the blood­stream into tis­sue and organs, caus­ing swelling, which can lead to infec­tions, blood clots, and kid­ney failure.

By the time they diag­nosed his dis­ease cor­rect­ly, his sur­vival was in ques­tion. After two mis­car­riages, Cindy was four months preg­nant. To con­trol the strain on her as best we could, I took the lead with my son’s crisis.

I dropped every­thing and he and I moved into the Children’s Hos­pi­tal of Los Ange­les. The first night, his eyes swelled shut. I held him in my arms and tried to calm his fears. At dawn, diuret­ics mer­ci­ful­ly flushed the water from his swollen face and he could see again, but the process didn’t stop there. The excre­tion of water con­tin­ued for hours, relent­less­ly shrink­ing him down to a skele­ton wrapped in pale gray skin as he screamed in pain from con­tin­u­ous mus­cle cramps.

When they’d purged all the stag­nant water, the doc­tors built him up with injec­tions of albu­min. He would cry each time the doc­tor unveiled the nee­dle. We tried to turn it into a game. “How long can you hold out before you cry? Bet you can’t make it all the way through the shot?” On day five, the doc­tor and I cheered when he took the injec­tion with­out flinching.

His improve­ment allowed him to sleep, so I wan­dered down the hall. I still can’t talk about the par­ents and kids I met, and with this post I’ve learned I can’t write about them either. The mem­o­ries are too painful to con­front. Survivor’s guilt plays a role, too. My son recov­ered. Many did not.

On the six­teenth day, they cleared my son to go home. In the dis­charge con­fer­ence, the doc­tor said we still had a long way to go. His con­di­tion was chron­ic. Relaps­es are vir­tu­al­ly inevitable. The steroid, pred­nisone, would help his kid­neys func­tion prop­er­ly, but because of its harsh side effects, he could only take it in six-week inter­vals. After each cycle, his kid­neys would per­form nor­mal­ly for an indef­i­nite time, then break down again. I was to test his urine dai­ly. When he relapsed, we would resume the prednisone.

“How long will this last?” I asked the doctor.

“Most chil­dren car­ry the dis­ease into their late teens, some into young adult­hood. You must be vig­i­lant. An unde­tect­ed relapse can be as seri­ous as the first episode.”

Back at home, I gave my son the pred­nisone. It changed the shape of his face to resem­ble a cab­bage patch doll with flushed chip­munk cheeks; he got chub­bier; and he was moody and uncom­fort­able. After six weeks, we stopped the drug and his appear­ance and mood nor­mal­ized. I test­ed his kid­neys dai­ly, dip­ping a plas­tic yel­low stick in a urine sam­ple. If it turned green, he was in trou­ble. Each day I was relieved when the stick stayed yel­low, then imme­di­ate­ly began wor­ry­ing about the next one. I came to hate those sticks.

At the hos­pi­tal, I’d learned a hard les­son. Time with my son was pre­cious and irre­place­able. I vowed not to squan­der the sec­ond chance I’d been giv­en. I vol­un­teered to coach his soc­cer and T‑ball teams, signed up for Dodger sea­son tick­ets, and planned week­end activ­i­ties for us to share. On one of our out­ings that spring, we went to San­ta Ani­ta Park, a beau­ti­ful race­course with man­i­cured dirt and turf tracks and a grass infield. My son picked the hors­es; I placed our two-dol­lar bets; and we played catch on the grass between races.

In the eighth race, he picked num­ber three. We went to the pad­dock where you can see the hors­es up close. Num­ber three didn’t look like much. Sweat­ing and foam­ing at the mouth, the under­sized five-year-old bay geld­ing seemed ner­vous and unruly. We can kiss that two bucks good­bye, I thought.

From the bleach­ers, we watched three come from way back in the pack to pull ahead in the stretch and win by a half-length. We hugged and cheered, and for a short while, I for­got about the dark cloud hang­ing over us.

The fol­low­ing Mon­day, the stick turned gold; lime green the next day; then hunter green. We resumed the pred­nisone dos­es. The cab­bage patch face, weight gain, and mood­i­ness returned. Six weeks passed, and we stopped the drug again.

Cindy gave birth to our first daugh­ter in June, and she became a sec­ond source of love and joy.

Anoth­er relapse came in July, fol­lowed by anoth­er round of prednisone.

The sticks were still yel­low in Novem­ber when my son and I returned to the race­track. To my sur­prise, the bay geld­ing was entered in a major stakes race. He still didn’t look like much to me, but the bet­ting crowd made him the pro­hib­i­tive favorite and my son picked him again.

He start­ed the race bad­ly, falling ten lengths behind and stay­ing there all the way down the back­stretch. Sev­en lengths off the lead going into the last turn with­out much track to go, he seemed sure to lose.

We stood on the rail about fifty feet from the fin­ish line. I looked down the track and got a head-on view of him com­ing up the final stretch. I’ll nev­er for­get that snap­shot image, forelegs pound­ing the turf like pis­tons, clods fly­ing up behind him, wide glossy chest rip­pling with mus­cle, ears laid back, nos­trils flared, head and neck pump­ing pow­er­ful­ly with each stride.

The track announcer’s bass voice boomed, “Here … Comes … John … Hen­ry!” The crowd roared, and a chill went up my spine. He pulled ahead by a nose as he thun­dered by us and he buried the field by two lengths at the wire.

The gallery went wild. My son and I did, too. It was one of the most thrilling moments we’d ever shared.

Days passed into weeks, then months, and the sticks remained yel­low. In August 1982, we reached the one-year mark with­out a failed test.

Com­pla­cen­cy is your ene­my, I told myself. Relaps­es are inevitable. You must be vigilant.

That fall we went to the track to watch John Hen­ry run again. By that time, he was famous and even infre­quent race­track patrons like me knew his rags to rich­es sto­ry. With no pedi­gree, under­sized, ill-tem­pered, and back at the knees, John Hen­ry ran poor­ly as a young horse. A series of knowl­edge­able own­ers sold him for a song until Sam Rubin, a rac­ing novice, bought him for $25000 sight unseen against a veterinarian’s neg­a­tive rec­om­men­da­tion. Frus­trat­ed with John Henry’s lack­lus­ter per­for­mances, Rubin fired his train­er, moved him to Cal­i­for­nia, and placed him with Ron McAnally.

Known for his affec­tion for his hors­es, McAnal­ly and his staff bond­ed with the frac­tious bay geld­ing, train­ing him with car­rots, apples, and ten­der lov­ing care. It worked.

In 1981, McAnal­ly put John Hen­ry up against the best hors­es in the world, and he won six major stakes races, includ­ing the two my son and I watched.

When my son and I returned to the track in the fall of 1982, he was sev­en years old, long in the tooth for a race­horse, but he hadn’t lost a step. He won that race with his patent­ed, heart-pound­ing, come-from-behind charge, and my wor­ries again fell away for at least a few moments as we joined the crowd’s fren­zied cheer­ing for The People’s Champion.

By the time the sum­mer of 1983 rolled around, John Hen­ry was still win­ning races, and my son kept test­ing yel­low. In August, short­ly after we passed the sec­ond anniver­sary of the last green stick, the doc­tor called me.

“No child has ever relapsed after two years of nor­mal kid­ney func­tion,” he said. “Very few chil­dren out­grow the dis­ease before their teen years. Con­grat­u­la­tions. Your son is now one of them.”

It took me a few moments to find my voice. “Thank you for everything.”

My son grew up to be strong and healthy. A suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man today, he’s mar­ried with two chil­dren and his kid­ney dis­ease is a dis­tant mem­o­ry of a cri­sis that forged an iron bond between us.

After set­ting the life­time purse-earn­ings record of $6,597,947 and win­ning every sig­nif­i­cant award in horse rac­ing, John Hen­ry retired at ten years old. A news­pa­per arti­cle cel­e­brat­ing his improb­a­ble suc­cess against all odds said he lift­ed the spir­its and touched the lives of thou­sands of peo­ple. My son and I were two of them. He brought us thrills and joy when we need­ed them most, and his deter­mined charges down the final stretch, run­ning on pure heart and guts, refus­ing to give up, inspired me to per­se­vere and gave me hope.

John Hen­ry lived in the Hall of Cham­pi­ons at Lexington’s Ken­tucky Horse Park until his death in 2007 at age 32. It seems a touch­ing twist of fate that the cause of death was kid­ney failure.

The duck glid­ed to a smooth land­ing in our swim­ming pool last May. Wild-eyed and froth­ing at the mouth, our Amer­i­can Bull­dog Zoey ran back and forth along the sand­stone skirt bark­ing fran­ti­cal­ly while the duck pad­dled lazy cir­cles in the water just out of her reach. After taunt­ing Zoey for an hour, she flew away. The next sev­er­al morn­ings she returned and the same scene played out.

I sent a cell phone video with a text mes­sage to our kids. “This duck vis­its our pool every day for the sole pur­pose of tor­ment­ing Zoey.”

Ducks had tak­en over my daughter-in-law’s par­ents’ pool years ear­li­er, and she knew what I was in for. “Oh no,” she replied. “She’ll lay eggs. You’ll have poop everywhere.”

She was right on both counts. I found the nest tucked under bush­es behind the pool. It sealed my fate. Dis­turb­ing a duck’s nest is a crim­i­nal mis­de­meanor in Cal­i­for­nia. Once she drops an egg, her squatter’s rights are absolute. She owns the place until she decides to leave.

The quan­ti­ty of poop defied the laws of biol­o­gy and physics. The duck drib­bled run­ny lakes of it every­where she went. Poop soon cov­ered most of the hard­scape. Oscar, the pool man, said it would stain the stone, so I slogged out to the pool and hosed and swept and hosed and swept while the poop machine float­ed in the water, quack­ing con­tent­ed­ly. This went on for four weeks.

Then every­thing changed. The morn­ing of June 10 the duck led sev­en lit­tle fur­balls into the water. I’d nev­er seen a baby duck up close. I stood by the pool and stared at them for a long time.

That day hos­ing and sweep­ing didn’t seem so bad.

Zoey had lost inter­est in the duck, and our oth­er dog, P.D., made friends with it, so I thought the duck­lings were safe in our back­yard. I was wrong.

The day after they were born, mama duck marched them across the yard to the frog pond. An hour lat­er, I found her stand­ing beside our rail fence on a hill­side strug­gling to main­tain her foot­ing. Trapped between chain link sta­pled to the fence to keep the dogs inside and the fine-mesh net that keeps the rat­tlers out, a duck­ling hopped around like a ping pong ball. It couldn’t get out and mama couldn’t free it.

The slope is steep and falls 100 feet to a rock shelf. At 73 with dou­ble knee replace­ments, I had no busi­ness climb­ing down that hill, but I was the only one there. Hold­ing on to the fence to keep my bal­ance, I slid down the hill, reached into the net­ting, and grabbed the lit­tle fur­ball. Where­upon mama duck flew into my face, whack­ing me between the eyes with her bill and box­ing my ears with her wings.

I fell, which on that steep grade was like jump­ing out of an air­plane back­wards with­out a para­chute. The fall didn’t kill me sole­ly because the only tree on the hill stood fif­teen feet direct­ly below me. I land­ed on it, impaled face up, its bro­ken branch­es spear­ing my back.  Spew­ing a string of curs­es, I climbed down stiffly and clawed my way back up the slope.

At the top, I found the duck­ling swim­ming in the frog pond while mama duck ran back and forth in the yard, des­per­ate­ly search­ing for the oth­ers. A line of tall podocar­pus trees stands along the fence line there. I heard the duck­lings cheep­ing some­where behind them, fought my way through their branch­es, and saw the babies run­ning in cir­cles in my neighbor’s yard. They’d appar­ent­ly slipped through a crease in the snake fence and couldn’t find their way back. Mama was too big to fol­low them through the hole and not smart enough to fly over the trees to join them.

Curs­ing again, I grabbed a tote bag from the pool house and climbed over the fence. The duck­lings thought I want­ed to kill them and ran amok. Push­ing my tita­ni­um knees to their lim­it, I juked, jived, and bee-bopped all over hell. I caught four, but couldn’t find the oth­er two. Exhaust­ed, I climbed back over the fence and returned the four to mama duck.

Lying in bed that night with my back-side paint­ed in iodine from neck to ankles, I couldn’t stop think­ing about the miss­ing duck­lings out there in the dark, lost and afraid.

In the morn­ing, only four babies swam with mama. One of those I’d saved was gone. I spent the day search­ing the yard, the slope, and the neighbor’s yard, all to no avail.

The next morn­ing, there were only three. The day after, two. Then one. I blamed mama duck. She would have lost all the duck­lings the day after they hatched if I hadn’t retrieved them. Now, her appar­ent neglect was killing the ones I’d saved.

The last duck­ling held on through the week. Each morn­ing I awoke with dread but was relieved to find it by its mama’s side.

On June 20, we found a big rat­tlesnake in our back­yard. It made me won­der. Hawks cir­cle the sky. Owls roost in our red­woods. Coy­otes prowl the horse trails. Maybe mama duck had done her best. Maybe she was heart­bro­ken, too.

Weeks passed. The baby grew to half mama’s size with the brown-speck­led mark­ings of a female mal­lard. In August, she took wing on her maid­en flight, glid­ed south, and bank-turned back to the pool.

The fol­low­ing week, mama flew away and didn’t return. Alone for the first time, the two-month-old duck hun­kered down on the hard­scape at night­fall, look­ing for­lorn. Feel­ing sor­ry for her, I tossed her pieces of bread the next morn­ing. She gob­bled it up. I gave her more at twi­light. By the end of the week, she was eat­ing it out of my hand.

When I told my six-year-old grand­daugh­ter about feed­ing the duck bread, she crin­kled her nose. “You shouldn’t do that, Papaw.” Bread doesn’t pro­vide the nutri­ents ducks require, she said. “It’s like eat­ing Big Macs all the time. It’ll make her sick.”

A lit­tle zool­o­gy-genius, she knows every­thing about ani­mals, but I checked with the inter­net experts just to be sure. They agreed I was killing my duck with junk food.

I bought fifty pounds of Puri­na duck pel­lets. The duck wouldn’t touch the stuff. Instead, she snarfed up left-over dog food from P.D.’s bowl. My grand­daugh­ter said the dog food was okay, but not healthy enough to sus­tain her. I tried mix­ing duck pel­lets with dog food. She wolfed it down, and from there on, she ran from the pool to meet me when­ev­er I opened the patio door to come and feed her.

She stayed with us through August and September.

One morn­ing in Octo­ber, she flew away but returned at twi­light. She came and went sev­er­al times over the next week. Then, a big wind storm ripped through Hid­den Hills. When it was over, she was gone. Wor­ried that she was injured, I searched but found no trace of her. She prob­a­bly migrat­ed to a warmer cli­mate, I told myself, hop­ing it was true.

Months rolled by with no sign of her.

In Feb­ru­ary, I was sit­ting in my home office when a female and two male mal­lards land­ed in the pool. I went to the win­dow and stared hard at the female. She’s prob­a­bly not my duck, I thought. There are hun­dreds of mal­lards in the area and they all look alike. Before I could get to the door, they flew away and didn’t return.

In March, I was stand­ing at the kitchen win­dow when a male and female mal­lard touched down in the pool. Same female as before, I guessed, down to one boyfriend for the mat­ing sea­son. When I opened the patio door to go out to the pool for a clos­er look, the female scur­ried out of the water, ran all the way across the yard, stopped in front of me, looked up, and cocked her head to one side. “Quack!”

A wave of relief washed over me. “Glad to see you, too,” I said softly.

I set a bowl of her spe­cial canine duck food mix out by the pool. She and her boyfriend lin­gered most of the day, then flew away.

She hasn’t returned.

Yet.

Last year, mama duck estab­lished her nest in May. I check the pool first thing every morning.

On a cold Sun­day morn­ing in 1963, Dad was preach­ing from the pul­pit at Mount Mori­ah Methodist Church in White Hall, Vir­ginia, when screech­es and howls came up through the floor and a smoth­er­ing cloud of nox­ious fumes filled the sanctuary.

Sit­ting in one of the front pews, Cecil Gib­son jumped up and yelled, “Skunk!”

Dad hus­tled down from the pul­pit, wav­ing his arms toward the back doors. “Every­one outside!”

Hack­ing and cough­ing, the con­gre­ga­tion stam­ped­ed down the aisles, through the vestibule, and out the door. As the crowd of wor­ship­pers sucked in fresh air under a grove of tall pines, Cecil found a breach in the wire mesh over an open­ing to the church’s crawl space. Shin­ing a flash­light into the dark void, he spied a male and female skunk in fla­grante delic­to.

Up to that time, Dad had stead­fast­ly refused to call off church ser­vices even in the face of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. He preached through floods, boom­ing thun­der­storms, and hur­ri­cane winds. Even when a big black snake slith­ered down the aisle and scur­ried under the piano in the mid­dle of Dad’s ser­mon, we dis­en­tan­gled the snake from the piano strings and Dad picked up right where he left off.

But skunk mat­ing sea­son posed a prob­lem like no oth­er. When the amorous cou­ple chose the warm space under the House of the Lord to seal their bond, they turned the sanc­tu­ary into a lethal gas cham­ber. Dad had no choice but to shut the place down.

It took three days for sev­er­al brave church mem­bers to chase the skunks from their hon­ey­moon bun­ga­low. By then the fur­nace had pumped their per­fume through heat­ing ducts into every nook and cran­ny. Cur­tains, cush­ions, and altar cloths were so mar­i­nat­ed in skunk juice they couldn’t be cleansed and had to be burned.

Fifty years lat­er when a pair of pole­cats bur­rowed under our house in San Mari­no, I remem­bered the lessons of the Mount Mori­ah skunk inva­sion. To pro­tect our fur­ni­ture and cloth­ing, I turned off the fur­nace and sealed off the duct vents, then made an urgent call to the ani­mal con­trol peo­ple. They referred me to a skunk specialist.

Some voca­tion­al choic­es make no sense to me. I can’t under­stand why any­one would strug­gle through med­ical school and then choose to become a proc­tol­o­gist. In Rat­tlesnake Avoid­ance Train­ing, I made clear you couldn’t pay me enough to be a rat­tlesnake han­dler. I’d sign up for those jobs in a heart­beat, though, if my only alter­na­tive was a career in skunk removal.

I smelled the skunk tech­ni­cian before his truck round­ed the turn at the end of my street. Short and over­weight with greasy shoul­der-length black hair and an expres­sion on his face befit­ting some­one on death row, he explained that he would bait a cage with peanut but­ter, trap the skunks overnight, and return the next morn­ing to col­lect them for release in the Ange­les Nation­al For­est. Cov­er­ing my nose with a ker­chief, I wrote him a check and care­ful­ly hand­ed it to him with­out mak­ing phys­i­cal contact.

At dawn, I awoke to enraged screams when the trap door fell, lock­ing the skunks in the cage. Lat­er that morn­ing when the skunk guy threw a tarp over the steel box and car­ried it out to his truck, they screamed again. The cloud of spray envelop­ing him was as thick as coal dust and the stench was … well … there are no words. As he drove away, I won­dered what it must be like to be him, to have no hope of ever going out on a date, mak­ing a friend, enjoy­ing the com­pan­ion­ship of a faith­ful pet, or even com­ing with­in shout­ing dis­tance of any crea­ture with olfac­to­ry glands.

I tell you my his­to­ry with skunks as a long-wind­ed intro­duc­tion to this month’s top­ic of con­tro­ver­sy: Pepé Le Pew. Pepé is a car­toon skunk who starred in 17 Looney Tunes pro­duc­tions, mak­ing his debut in 1945 in Odor-able Kit­ty and win­ning an Oscar in 1949 for Scent-imen­tal Rea­sons. Pepe’s char­ac­ter is mod­eled on Charles Boy­er, a French cin­e­mat­ic heart­throb of the 1940’s. Most of Pepe’s films involve the same plot line. By acci­dent a female cat ends up with a white stripe paint­ed down her back. Pepe mis­takes her for a skunk and falls in love. Bliss­ful­ly obliv­i­ous to his repul­sive odor, Pepé pur­sues the trau­ma­tized cat relent­less­ly while she des­per­ate­ly tries to fend him off.

When I was grow­ing up, Pepé’s one-sided, cross-species love affair made me laugh out loud, but appar­ent­ly not every child found Pepé’s antics humor­ous. In a March 3 NY Times op-ed about the can­cel­la­tion of sev­er­al Dr. Seuss Books, Charles Blow took a swipe at Pepé. “Some of the first car­toons I can remem­ber,” he wrote, “includ­ed Pepé Le Pew, who nor­mal­ized rape culture.”

At first, I thought Charles’s remark about Pepé was as looney as the toons he skew­ered, but in research­ing this post, I dis­cov­ered he is far from alone in regard­ing Pepé a per­vert. In 2000, Dave Chapelle, the come­di­an, in a stand-up rou­tine declared Pepé a “f****** rapist.” He was fish­ing for a laugh and got one, but since then many schol­ar­ly arti­cles have made sim­i­lar dead-seri­ous accu­sa­tions against Pepé.

This from Kirsten Thomp­son, Pro­fes­sor of Film Stud­ies at Seat­tle Uni­ver­si­ty: “Pepé’s nar­cis­sism relies on a strat­e­gy of dis­avow­al so hyper­bol­ic and resilient that his per­for­ma­tive and con­struct­ed mas­culin­i­ty lays bare its ide­o­log­i­cal repres­sion. Here the role of the joke nego­ti­ates the unset­tling ter­ri­to­ry of any cas­tra­tion anxieties.”

I have no clue what that means, but it doesn’t sound good, espe­cial­ly that last part.

Dr. Amber George, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Cul­tur­al Diver­si­ty at Galen Col­lege of Nurs­ing, deliv­ered a more blunt cri­tique, assert­ing that Pepé’s behav­ior con­sti­tutes “sex­u­al harass­ment, stalk­ing, and abuse.” Pro­fes­sor Amy Bar­tow of the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Hamp­shire School of Law shared Charles Blow’s reac­tion to Pepé. “Those car­toons made me uneasy as a child, and now I find them tru­ly sick­en­ing. Rape isn’t fun­ny, and it cer­tain­ly isn’t ‘love.’”

After read­ing these arti­cles, I thought maybe I’m the one who’s looney, so I down­loaded Scen­ti-men­tal Rea­sons and watched it again. Okay, appar­ent­ly I’ve grown up a lit­tle. I’ll admit Pepé isn’t as fun­ny to me now as he was when I was a kid, and I can see what offends his detrac­tors. As Charles tweet­ed in defense of his NY Times remark, “Pepé grabs/kisses a girl/stranger, repeat­ed­ly, w/o con­sent and against her will.”

I get that, but I don’t agree with the con­clu­sions Charles and oth­ers draw from it – that Pepé teach­es lit­tle boys no doesn’t real­ly mean no and over­com­ing a woman’s stren­u­ous objec­tions is nor­mal, adorable, and funny.

I real­ize I’m not attuned to the chang­ing social norms. No one would char­ac­ter­ize me as “woke.” In fact, as an old guy who has a hard time remain­ing con­scious for eight hours at a stretch, my polit­i­cal state of aware­ness is, at best, “som­nam­bu­lant.”

But come on, man! Here’s the deal! Pepé’s a skunk. He’s chas­ing a cat. Skunks don’t rape cats. I’m not even sure skunks rape skunks. The cat isn’t afraid of Pepe’s “per­for­ma­tive and con­struct­ed mas­culin­i­ty.” She’s afraid of chok­ing to death on tox­ic skunk mist. That’s the joke – Pepé’s mis­ap­pre­hen­sion that the cat is a skunk who is immune from his stench. Which could nev­er hap­pen in real life because, and here’s the kick­er, CARTOONS ARE NOT REAL! They are named “Looney Tunes” for a reason.

I con­fess, how­ev­er, that I’m prob­a­bly not an objec­tive judge of Pepé’s char­ac­ter. I feel a cer­tain kin­ship with him. When your last name is Oder, you endure a lot of taunt­ing in ele­men­tary school. For a hor­ri­ble few weeks in the third grade, I got sad­dled with the nick­name Stinky. My lit­tle broth­er had it worse. In the sec­ond grade, the teacher assigned lock­er mates using the alpha­bet­i­cal order of their last names. In a cru­el twist of fate, my brother’s lock­er bud­dy became Ron­nie Pugh (pro­nounced “pew”). The Oder-Pugh lock­er took a lot of gas, so to speak. For those of us in the Oder clan, and prob­a­bly for most of the Pughs, Pepé’s per­sis­tent con­fi­dence in the face of an over­pow­er­ing social stig­ma gave us the strength to endure the wit­less slings and arrows of count­less imma­ture stu­pid jerks (not that we took it per­son­al­ly or hold a grudge or anything).

So while I’ve assid­u­ous­ly avoid­ed writ­ing posts about my polit­i­cal views because Pol­i­tics Makes Me Sick, on this par­tic­u­lar con­tro­ver­sy I feel com­pelled to speak my mind.

Let me be clear. On the ques­tion of Pepé Le Pew, I stand with the skunk!