This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on the show,

and we especially love stories about our own history. And today we have Winter Prasapio, an author from Texas.

Here she is talking about the time she wrote a book called Weird U.S. Laws,

Strange, Bizarre, Wacky, and Absurd.

Here's Winter.

Ten years ago, I took a sabbatical from working and I decided I really wanted to pursue writing

a little bit more seriously.

So I started to look for opportunities to write.

Because I like humor writing and it comes very easily to me and a long time ago I had also

worked for something called Citizens Against Lawsuit

Abuse. So I had actually worked in tort reform, talking about how small businesses were getting

killed by these little frivolous lawsuits. I reached out to an editor who was looking for a writer

to write about the weird U.S. laws. And they're a Canadian

company. So they find us incredibly amusing from that standpoint. And it was a lot of fun. I got to

work with an illustrator and another writer. And we took on the book. I know a lot of the weird

laws in Texas, some of which still exist like you cannot carry

a pair of fence cutters in your back pocket.

And in all of these things, you know, whenever you come across a law like that,

and you're like, that is just dumb.

And when you trace its history, that's where I think it's so interesting,

because everything has a story.

That's what makes it a lot of fun. There's the story because someone used to cut the fences.

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