Yelling

The nightmare for Bridget Banks began five years ago, on the day before Thanksgiving. The voice mail at her office that Wednesday afternoon said her daughter, then 12 years old and diagnosed with mild mental retardation, was being suspended from Baltimore's Southeast Middle School for fighting. When the mother arrived home, she said, she found her daughter unable to speak, her shirt ripped and her hair a mess. She shook her until she got her to talk. Banks was so mortified by what she heard that she made the girl repeat her story three times.

Good morning -- Melvin Mora -- Hope nobody was yelling on the bench last night.

The two friends hung out at least twice a week. Brian O'Neil Jones, a popular high school coach, and Alfred Winborne Jr., a mortgage consultant, bonded on the basketball court eight years before they were together for the last time one night in November 2005. The two had just left a bar on a well-lighted street in Canton about 1:30 a.m. when a man approached them carrying a rifle with a scope. Winborne, testifying this week in the Baltimore Circuit Court trial of the man charged with killing Jones, said the armed man yelled a profanity and then fired four shots as the two friends ran in opposite directions.

PHILADELPHIA -- Despite our best intentions, we break New Year's resolutions as fast as we make them. After studying this phenomenon for 30 years, I can tell you exactly why. For the vast majority of resolution-makers, there is simply no mental space to get that good behavior implanted. The answer is to free up space in your mind by removing the bad pattern that controls you before you can have room to implant the good pattern. This is the psychological version of "out with the bad air, in with the good."

DEAR HARRIETTE I love your column and, while I don't always agree with your counsel, I usually think you're on point. However, I think your advice to Deborah in Chicago, who was scared for a little girl being yelled at, was lacking. I am a mother of a 2-year-old, and when I chastise my daughter and sometimes raise my voice to her, it doesn't mean I am "strung out by emotion." Children need to be disciplined when they act up. That discipline ranges from a time-out, to getting a light pop, to getting yelled at. In this day and age, children are so disrespectful and ill-mannered, and it's not because children are different now, it's because parents are so different.

Maureen Sorenson Customer relations manager, Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration, Glen Burnie Salary --$45,000 Age --45 Years on the job --10 years in June. How she got started --Sorenson began at the MVA as an administrative secretary. She started her current job in 1998. Typical day --Sorenson works Monday through Friday 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. but is unofficially on-call if needed. About 75 percent of her work is dealing with customer complaints, either by telephone, e-mail or walk-ins.

On the morning of the tryout she was feeling a little "yikesy," which is not a word she uses often. It means afraid. Some 250 young - very young - women sprawled around her on the gym floor, lithe as lionesses. The snakelike hiss of aerosol hairspray filled the air. This had seemed like such a good idea the night before, at home in Roland Park. "Go for it," her husband had told her. "We can change our life for you." He snapped a few head shots while she dashed off a resume of her cheerleading experience.

One's fondness for the big-screen Dukes of Hazzard will depend on how many times one can be gladdened by hearing the exclamation "Yeeeeeee-haaaaaa." That's certainly the dominant line of dialogue in this movie, a multimillion-dollar version of a bargain-basement, down-home comedy that ran on CBS from 1979 to 1985. As the rhymingly named Luke Duke, Johnny Knoxville gets to scream it 47 times, while Willie Nelson as moonshining Uncle Jesse Duke bellows it 19 times and Jessica Simpson as the buxom, short-shorted Daisy Duke squeals it 11 times.

On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, at Pickett's Charge, two Vermont regiments from Brig. Gen. George J. Stannard's 2nd Vermont Brigade helped break the charge. The 13th and 16th Vermont Infantry Regiments turned toward the exposed Confederate advance and dispensed point-blank fire into Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett's flank, according to George R. Stewart and his book, Pickett's Charge: A microhistory of the final attack at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863, published in 1959. "Now the long months of tedious close-order drill suddenly paid off for the Vermonters," wrote Stewart.

CNN ANNOUNCED this week the likely demise of Crossfire, one of those high-volume political talk shows that has presented us with the entertaining sight of men in suits yelling at each other. One can only hope this is the start of a trend that spills over to sports television. First to go should be ESPN's Around the Horn, that dreadful weekday talk show featuring sports columnists competing to be the best bigmouth. The only redeeming quality is the feature by which host Tony Reali can mute one of the yakkers.