When I went to the post office yesterday, I pulled out a letter that was hand printed and had no return address. Because many of my customers commonly send tips this way, I thought nothing of it. I opened it and out slid a pink piece of stationary with a butterfly on it. My appreciation for it ended with the reading of the first sentence.

It was hate mail.

I will decline to share the text with you, as it bears no relevance to the topic of this discussion and, frankly, it still stings. But I will say that, as opinionated as I am, I have never been described as a hateful person. I can have an intense debate and walk away from it with respect for my opponent. But this person, although they were anonymous, obviously didn't know me personally because they didn't know my first name. They made their judgements solely off of having seen me (ironically, this is a community where virtually EVERYONE is a Christian...it's a safe bet this person was).

The real kicker came as I realized later that the actual letter was written by a CHILD. It obviously didn't express the child's viewpoint, as the person had to know my PO Box number and my last name at least. So what this meant was that, not only was the parent too chicken to write the letter themselves (probably because this town is small enough I could find out who wrote it easily enough), but that they are coaching their children in hate and passing the baton of bigotry off to another generation.

That last part is what really disgusts me.

The one thing I WILL share from the letter is that I was informed that I would have to cut my hair if I wanted to live in this town.