As expected a debate unsued, then an argument but before it escalated into a fight (debate, argument, fight —- may be synonyms in the thesaurus but they have a difference to me), I nipped it in the bud. I told him “We feel strongly about this, You have your opinion and I have mine. You have a right to yours and as I to mine. How about we agree to disagre and move on?” (with me thinking : “I have to save this budding friendship”) Surprisingly, he agreed (his gender is still not a lost cause). He told me it was a refreshing and unique way (for him) to end an argument.

Now, you wouldn’t believe the topics we discussed next…. RH bill, smoking ban, gun ownership and other supposedly “taboo” topics. You’d think we were in a warfreak mode. Our stand on the different issues were still on opposite ends of the spectrum but on a few we agreed on. Oh, we still presented our points as if we were in congress. But before things got heated, we said the magic words “agree to disagree”, do a fistbump and moved on to the next bill.