Labor contract discussions are heating up in a couple of school districts in Erie's region, which has prompted several interesting letters to the editor. A teacher recently wrote to dispute another letter that had taken a swipe at teachers. Essentially, the first writer claimed that teachers have it easy -- short working hours and long vacations.

Clearly incensed, the teacher responded in reasonable terms until the final lines of his letter, when he added, "Teachers work hard for their lousy three-percent raises."

That commented infuriated some newspaper readers, five of whom called me in my first hour at work the morning the letter appeared.

"Who does this guy think he is, griping about a three-percent raise?" the first caller snarled. "I'd love to have a three-percent raise. I've worked the last four years with no raise at all."

The next caller said her husband was recently laid off from his job at a local shop after 23 years of service. "When I saw this man casually tossing off his raise as if it was dirt, I saw red," she said. The other calls were in that vein.

The exchanges illustrate a couple of different points, I think. First, in matters of money, what might seem like a paltry sum to one person, might sound like a treasure to another.

When I was a boy, I once asked a family friend, who seemed fabulously wealthy to me (new car, fancy house, three TV sets), "How rich are you, anyway?" My mother quickly swept me out of that room and up to my bedroom to contemplate the error of my ways. Later, after she cooled off, I asked why it was wrong to ask about a rich person's wealth. They were obviously enjoying being rich.

"That's very personal information and it shouldn't matter to you," she said. "You never, ever talk about how much money a person has, or how much they earn, because that's their business and nobody else's."

My father, who was sports editor of this newspaper, felt pretty much the same way. When a local football player signed a professional contract in the 1960's, I asked him why he didn't print the dollar amount in the newspaper. "Readers would like to know how much he's worth," I said.

"That's too bad," Dad responded, because it's none of their business." Over time, athletes' salaries pretty much became public information. My father went along with it, but I'm sure he didn't like it. He went to his grave believing that money matters are private."

The lesson, I'm learning, is that people who write to the newspaper on subjects such as labor contracts, should probably be careful. Or not. Half the fun of writing a letter to the editor is spouting off -- saying whatever you feel like. But, judging from the tenor of the phone calls I received about the teacher's comments, I think he probably made some enemies for his cause. And I'm fairly sure that wasn't his intention.

-- Kevin Cuneo