Often I think the way I think is a product of being raised in my early years in a small town tucked away in a tiny, quiet, peaceful part of New York state where the mean, tough and sometimes brutal and evil world doesn’t penetrate.

We all should have that opportunity, by the way. But being raised where friendships are enduring and where help is always available, and where everything is out in the open and what you did five minutes ago has already raced around town, molds you into being a humble being rather quickly.

And honest, almost to a fault.

But the world 60 years later has moved away from that. Now you can’t turn around or say what you want to say without it being a cause celebre.

Take my grandson, a kid who is so talented in almost every area that I’m afraid to speak much about him for fear that I sound like a typical grandfather. But, to be honest, he is a leader among his peer group in academics, socially and athletically. And this is a column about honesty and the lack of political correctness, so I will proceed.

Jacob (or Joker, as I call him), was at track practice when he noticed one of his friends had better than average jumping ability. So he decided to steer his friend to the high jump event. He started it off by saying to his friend, “You got black-man hops.”

The track coach heard his comment and immediately tore into Joker. She summoned the rest of the track team together and made an example out of him in front of everybody. Then she suspended him for the next track meet.

Despite my daughter and son-in-law’s best efforts, the track coach could not be budged. The suspension stayed and the coach had no sympathy for Joker, one of the most well-liked kids in his school.

My small-town roots tell me the track coach is an idiot. Joker’s comment came on the heels of the Don Imus controversy and probably had a part in the coach’s reaction. But Joker played on a select basketball team that was 80 percent black and they talked to each other like this all the time.

But this story is being repeated way too many times in our society for my good. I’m tired of it all, and am not going to take it anymore.

The dispute over display of Christmas trees at Sea-Tac Airport last winter was solved when the rabbi who started it backed off and the trees were again displayed. As much as that left me shaking my head, I am still bothered by the Port Authority refusing to say they were Christmas trees. The port refers to them as holiday trees. In fact, now it’s become more acceptable to use the term “holiday” when referring to almost anything involved with the Christmas season.

Get real. It’s Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, not holiday season, the birth of Jesus Holiday.

While we’re at it, I expect in a few more years that the Christmas season will begin in most retail stories in early September. It’s already bearing down on October. Maybe we should celebrate the Fourth of July in June.

Pacman Jones can’t seem to stay out of trouble and now he’s asking the NFL to reconsider his year-long suspension from the league. The league can do what it wants, that’s why it is organized as a group. But Pacman ought to consider going to Iraq where his tendency for getting into trouble would fit right in, where he might be able to clean up a block or two of Baghdad all by himself.

The Cowboy in the White House continues to ignore good advice, the consensus of the American population, Congress and just about everybody else in the world. But why should we be surprised? His cowboy mentality doesn’t allow him to bow to anybody. I bet if I said the sky is blue, he would say no it isn’t, it’s purple.

My only problem is that so far I don’t see any presidential contender on the campaign trail who stands out and could reverse the disaster the Cowboy created. The next president will be a Democrat, I think most of us can agree on that. But which one? Who has the moxie, the will to turn around what the Cowboy has done?

Will it be the first woman or first black?

I don’t know. I’m not excited about either one, yet. So thrill me, I say. Hillary do something to make me believe you are it. Obama sounds sweet, but is he tough enough to not shake with fear the first time there is a world crisis? We know Hillary is. But do we really want Bill hanging around with White House interns again?

Maybe we should elect Pacman, or Ricky Williams, and then we could have White House smoke-overs.

It doesn’t amaze me that NFL teams still covet Williams. When it comes right down to it, the NFL is not unlike the rest of us. If it will make us more money, go for it. Williams will make some team better because of his excellent running ability, so why worry about the occasional failed drug test. That’s what the NFL is telling us.

And I agree. Let Williams run and smoke in equal amounts. I think the lucky team should offer him a few millions in cash and a few thousand ounces of marijuana A happy man, no matter how he gets happy, is a productive man.

I don’t understand all the commotion about Jeff Weaver. Look at him this way: he’s being paid $8.3 million this year to fatten up batting averages. What’s wrong with that?

Weaver was not a good pitcher for St. Louis last year. He had a good post-season, but if you look – and you don’t even have to look closely – he was not good. Hasn’t been good. Is not good. So why weep? Let the man go. Give him his walking papers, and his money, and move on.

Baseball is full of stories about teams picking up pitchers through free agency or trade with the promise to the home fans that this is the missing piece to a championship season. Don’t ever believe the hype. That’s meant to sell you tickets, parking, concessions, merchandise. Just look at the guy’s baseball card and with just a whiff of baseball knowledge you can tell if the pitcher will pitch or not. History does not lie. What a pitcher is he is. You can’t make chicken out of chicken-s--t.

I swear the following story is true. And this is just another example of what we are doing to ourselves, how every part of our life nowadays is inspected, turned over, around, touched and probed to find something wrong, some dirt.

We got to stop it, by the way, before we destroy ourselves from within.

There is a local coach who years ago had his team ranked number one in the state after a few games. He was being interviewed by a reporter for a story on the subject when he decided to deride the poll that put his team first. Hey, he said, we could have played The School of the Blind nine times and be nine-and-oh and this poll would rank us number one, not considering, he said, the opposition.

Soon after the story appeared in the paper, the coach was called to the superintendent’s office. The super wanted to know what was going on. You are going to get us in trouble making fun of the blind, the superintendent said.

The coach was set back by this reaction. He had not expected his comment to be taken that way. But the coach, savvy off the diamond as on it, quickly recovered.

He told the super that they won’t be offended, “The School of the Blind can’t read it.”

Have a great month. Fight back. Don’t let them tell you, you can’t say what you mean.

You are loved.