I remember as a kid, "sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me." I remember well the many times I or someone else would recite those words.

Standing in the lunch line, I can recall Jill, the class bully — seriously — singling out me or someone else for a round of name-calling. We would just recite those words and turn our backs on her.

It doesn't always work, though. Certainly there were times as a child when name calling seemed to hurt enough that I would walk away and feel my wounds for a while before I got back up to play again.

Those times were usually words hurled at me by someone I cared about, like a best friend. Best friends or brothers and sisters can be like that, cruel at times.

My twin boys are clearly best friends and their next closest friend is their sister. The boys are expert at hurling names at one another.

"Twit!"

"Claw footed, hump-backed dinosaur breath!"

And they mean it, yet they don't let it absorb them because for those two, there's an unmistakable bond that surpasses name-calling and the like.

But it is their sister who does not so easily rebound from the cruelty that little brothers can produce. Her name is not "stupid" nor is it "ugly," she'll tell you. Moreover she'll inform you of the pain her little brothers inflicted with a face that will melt your adult heart and send you running to her with a hug.

And while you want to embrace her and pet her for a moment, you must also remind her that, indeed, "sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you."

"Yes they do," she tells me, her eyes big and round.

And, well, you know, she's right; they can hurt you.

The lessons that I learned as a child about such things can be useful. As a child I suppose I was testing the waters in so many ways, trying to figure out what this life thing is all about. Yet as an adult there are plenty of times when, just as I think I've figured it out, I don't get it at all.

My longtime best friend Larry was, perhaps, one of the cruelest and least sensitive people I have known. He and I grew up together and were like brothers so I would ignore some of his behavior and write it off as residual effects from his troubled childhood; information I was privy to and understood.

Yet as I grew older and the incidents of inappropriate behavior began to hurt more and more, I began to distance myself from him. I tried to explain it to him and he managed to find something crueler to do or say and people around me exclaimed that he was troubled.

Even today, I have faced adults who are apt at name-calling and snipe at you behind your back and even after being confronted, they proceed with impunity. Guess what, it hurts just as much today as it did when I was 10.

And that's OK because, yes, names will never really hurt me. But I suppose, if I was to rephrase the old saying to further help my children understand the complications of life, I would add that it only feels bad for a little while until you realize that, yes, it really isn't you that is being hurt. The name callers only hurt themselves.

But that might be a lesson they, like me, need to learn in adulthood.