I'll get this out of the way...I think the link itself (the one that became the subject of the controversy) is quite humorous.

What's really interesting here are the comments...one person took missed the humor value and took offense, and the following comments seemed to be a series of people trying to outdo each other with the stories of their humble beginnings.

I spent many years trying to down play the fact that one side of my family was decidedly blue collar, bordering at times on the fringes of redneck. I only wanted to be related to the other side - the affluent, well-educated business owners. That was where it was at, in my view.

As I grew up, I slowly began to appreciate the hard work and sacrifice that came from my mother's family, as well as the unconditional love that came from my grandparents. No grandchild was ever shown preference...they were, in fact, painfully equal for all four of us.

I'm no longer embarrassed that my grandfather dropped out of school in the 8th grade to pick cotton to help support his very large family...he was doing what he had to do.

I've grown to take pride in the fact that the first year or two of my grandparents' marriage (which lasted 60 years) was spent on a WPA work crew, with Granddaddy paving roads in the hot Texas sun, and my Mama Lee cooking for the entire crew. Again...doing what they had to do, living with integrity, not trying to be anything they weren't.

Granddaddy's greatest wish for his grandchildren (my two cousins, my brother, and me) was for each of us to graduate from high school. It was always a fundamental disconnect in my mind that the "reward" for completing high school was so much greater than than that for graduating from college...especially when all four of us were raised with the question about college being "where" rather than "if.") My mother finally explained to me that he knew we would all finish high school, but he didn't want to "punish" any of us if we didn't finish college, or even go in the first place. It all leads back to the equality issue.

And yes, we all graduated from high school. And we all graduated from college. And he lived to see most of it, missing my brother receiving his college degree by less than a year.

I'm proud and grateful for everything they did for us, because their hard work is part of the reason I have had the opportunities I've had. But most importantly, I'm thankful that they were so amazingly authentic. I only wished I had embraced that earlier in my life.

I think I'll go upstairs and check the Tivo for this week's My Name is Earl...