against them. Some of that certainly rubbed off on me, and earned me a fat lip on the grade school playground before I learned the hard way that an outsider should think more than twice about using the word 'Mormon' in any way, shape, or form as an insulting epithet. It also cost me a friend whose parents heard of this incident and forbade my presence in their home. It did seem that they controlled almost every aspect of life in our community back then, especially the schools. The stakes controlled the local BSA council, local politics, city employment, and if you weren't in, you were out. I did not learn until years later, when I had asked my mother for the reasons my father held such viewpoints, that the doctor who had presided over her only still birth just so happened to be LDS. That did not answer fully my question, but it gave me some insight into the visceral and tribal motivations that drives our need to objectify. In my junior and senior years of high school, I had neglected to take the unknown to me state required number of credits in physical education needed to graduate. At that time, I had hitchhiked across the nation twice, and was generally having a good old time living in the 70's detritus of the 60's youth revolution, on my own, for the most part, and would never have received my diploma had my very LDS drama teacher not intervened on