It was the mid-1980s.

My mother and I were helping may sister Mary move into the 9-story Whitney Hall dorm at Chico State.

Floors 2 through 5 were for the male students.

Floors 6 through 9 were for the female students.

The three of us — with mom in the middle — got on the elevator in the lobby carrying boxes.

A few seconds later, a young man stepped on with a box, as well.

He turned around to face the door and then pushed the button for his floor.

It was just the four of us.

We couldn’t help but see the back of the guy’s head.

Mary and I looked at each other.

Strike that.

We were stealing a quick glance at mom.

And mom was looking straight at the guy’s ear.

It happened to have an ear lobe ring in it.

Again, keep in mind it was the mid-1980s.

It was the beginning of a new trend for modern-day America.

Guys no longer had to be sailors or Gypsies to wear earrings.

The elevator stopped at the fifth floor.

The guy got out.

Mary, just as the door closed, started to talk.

I’m thinking to myself “please don’t.”

Then Mary said the six words that made me close my eyes and wish I was somewhere else: “Right is wrong, left is right.”

Why did she have to go there?

Mom got a quizzical look on her face as she turned toward my sister.

Mary was halfway across the Rubicon. She decided to complete the trip.

She explained if a guy wore a ring in his left ear, he was straight. If it was in his right ear, it supposedly meant he was gay.

However judgmental that might sound today, it was part of phrases many under 25 parroted back then.

Mom, who had a talent for having a world-class poker face at the most inopportune time, looked at Mary as if she had a hole in her head.

I felt my face turning red given I thought we were in kind in a conversational twilight zone for two adult children and their mother who was born at the dawn of the Roaring 20s.

Not another word was said until after we were off the elevator and near Mary’s room.

For some reason, I felt I had to explain what Mary meant.

To do so would be treading into the general arena of sex, considering at the time if a guy chose to wear an earring he supposedly would do so to signal his sexual preferences.

My mom, which I should have remembered, had no problem with someone being gay.

Her favorite nephew, who ended up getting killed in a car crash in 1962, was gay. So were some of the teens she opened our home to on a temporary basis when they were kicked out their homes by their parents.

My mom was more tolerant and accepting of people in the general genre of what someone does in their own lives is their business.

It is a great example to follow.

But the fact the guy could have been gay was what Mary and I were worried about when mom stared at the young man’s head.

We were worried that she was going to ask the question out loud about the earrings when the guy was still in the elevator.

That is another lesson we learned from our mother. 

Don’t, that is, if you can avoid it, open your mouth to respond instantly to something you see or read that might not seem right to you or that you don’t understand.

It is one of the problems we have today.

We can’t hold our tongues — or pounding words on a screen — without pausing to make sure we aren’t just shooting from the hip or may say something that comes out sounding demeaning, although it may not seem so to us.

Last week, I penned a column that had more than its fair share of satire to poke fun at some members of Congress falling over each other to introduce legislation to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America on all federal documents and maps.

It prompted a letter from Bulletin reader Stephen Breacain.

After reading the letter, I thought it was a well-executed effort at making a point by humor.

I then got an email and phone call from readers that said they agreed with me that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed.

It got me to thinking I somehow may have failed to construct my column in a manner that anyone reading it realized I was poking fun to the whole idea while stressing the point that there are whales of problems Congress need to fry, instead of pursuing issues that are more on the side of being minnow fingerlings.

Thinking that maybe Mr. Breacain might have read the column the way the other two readers did meaning that I thought renaming the Gulf of Mexico was a brilliant idea, I sent him an email hoping that he understood I was trying to make a point with humor.

The letter ran the next day. That afternoon, I received an email from Mr. Breacain that he understood it was satire and built on the general argument in kind in his letter.

In short, it assured me I had not missed the mark.

That was until I listened to a phone message the next day from a reader who said the Bulletin was nothing but a bunch of white racists because we ran Mr. Breacain’s letter.

The line the caller zeroed in on read as follows, “it’s an accepted fact that white Americans are the rightful heirs to planet Earth, so it is our manifest destiny to control the planet and name stuff whatever amuses us.”

Given what followed in the letter, it clearly was tongue in cheek.

For whatever reason, the reader chose to read it the way he did and either take it out of context or simply isolate the line to trigger his reaction.

It may have fit his preconceived notions of the Bulletin.

There is also one other possibility.

It may not have even read the sentence per se.

That would have required actually reading the letter.

The headline contained part of the sentence followed by an ellipsis (three periods with space in between).

Typically, it means more to a thought or — in the case of usage in the headline — more of a pregnant pause that the late Jack Benny liberally employed to make a comic point.

That was back in the days when people who called themselves comedians didn’t come up with creative ways to use the f-word that would make Sam Kinison blush or take a buzz saw to people that would make Don Rickles recoil in horror.

It would be nice to be back in the days when satirists such as Mark Twain and vaudeville performer/actor/humorous social commentator Will Rogers using humor in a bid to get people to think were able to make points about social issues and governing.

As Americans, we were once more open to laughing at ourselves.

And, no, Mark Twain wasn’t Shania Twain’s father.

Mr. Breacain made a point in his response to my email that we all are going to need humor to get by over the next four years. That’s regardless of what side of the fence you are on or if you are trying to straddle it.

We can do without channeling the Hatfields and McCoys every time we interact with someone we disagree with or when we comment on things we don’t agree with.

If not, then at the very least we should try to hold our tongues until we process what someone says or does since we supposedly are blessed with minds that can rationalize and reason as opposed to a reptilian brain that automatically prompts attacking with fangs extended.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com