Dear Annie: I would like to get the message to my older sister, “Nadine,” that my husband and I want her to stop insisting on dragging our two children to church with her every Sunday. She just won’t take “no” for an answer.Nadine is long divorced, and her only child lives out of town, so she doesn’t have anybody else to look after. My husband is an atheist, and I just want to sleep in on Sunday, so church isn’t really on our agenda.

Nadine insists that our children need to have this religious upbringing, and every Sunday morning, she calls our house to make sure I have the kids up and dressed and ready for her to pick up.

I really need my sleep on Sundays. Any ideas, short of alienating her entirely? (She gets her feelings wounded easily.) — Miffed in the MidwestDear Miffed> Nadine thinks she is saving your children’s souls, and she isn’t going to stop on her own. The fact that you will actually get up and dress the children encourages her to continue. If your children enjoy attending church and you don’t mind that they do, let them sleep at Nadine’s on Saturday night. Otherwise, tell your sister, “Sorry, we’re not dressing the children this morning. You’ll have to go without them.”

Dear Annie: We have a friend, “Dennis,” who is marrying a very wealthy woman. We think that’s great. Unfortunately, Dennis has a habit of showing us the expensive gifts his fiancee has given him, revealing their cost to us. I’ve told him this is gauche, but he persists. How should we reply the next time he tells us how much she paid for something? — Living on Social SecuriB>

Dear Living:<$> We worry about any engaged person who is so enamoured of his fiancee’s money. The next time he tells you the new watch cost $1,000, say, “Dennis, dear, your constant focus on these gifts makes us think you are marrying this woman only for her money. We’re sure that’s not the impression you want to give.”

Dear Annie: I thought you might like to forward the enclosed to the retired teacher who wrote about the Pledge of Allegiance. The late Red Skelton said it best. — R

Dear R.H.:<$> After receiving hundreds of copies of this, we decided our readers might want to see it. In 1969, Red Skelton talked about his school days in Indiana, and how one of his teachers, Mr. Lasswell, commented that the pledge was becoming a daily drudgery for the students because they had lost any sense of the meaning of the words. Mr. Lasswell decided to explain the meaning of each word: Pledge of Allegiance I: Me, an individual, a committee of one. PLEDGE: Dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without self-pity. ALLEGIANCE: My love and my devotion. TO THE FLAG: Our standard, Old Glory, a symbol of freedom. Wherever she waves, there’s respect, because our loyalty has given her a dignity that shouts “freedom is everybody’s job.” UNITED: That means that we have all come together. STATES: Individual communities that have united into 48 great states. Forty-eight individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose; all divided with imaginary boundaries yet united to a common purpose, and that’s love for country. AND TO THE REPUBLIC: A state in which sovereign power is invested in representatives chosen by the people to govern. And government is the people, and it’s from the people to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people. FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION: One nation, meaning “so blessed by God.” INDIVISIBLE: Incapable of being divided. WITH LIBERTY: Which is freedom, the right of power to live one’s own life without threats, fear or some sort of retaliation. AND JUSTICE: The principle or quality of dealing fairly with others. FOR ALL: For all, which means, boys and girls, it’s as much your country as it is mine.