Dog People, Cat People, Kid People, Single People, People People.

I was sitting having lunch with Ross Bekkering and his sister Janelle the other day.  Ross and Janelle are 2 of 5 siblings from a great family.  I love the Bekkerings.  (Not just the Taber crew, but their relatives as well.  All Bekkerings I know are great.)  Krista and I used to look at the way they showed love and support for each other and talk about how we hoped to foster the same love and support for each other in our own kids.

When we were having lunch we started talking about life and all that and I was talking about raising kids and parenting, and Ross started talking and prefaced his one statement with, "I have NO idea what it must be like to raise kids, but ..." and continued on with his thought.  It was a great conversation, like I said, I love the Bekkerings, but it got me thinking.

I started thinking about my sister and how her and her husband Chris, who are both gold, didn't really understand where Krista and I were coming from when we had kids and they didn't.  They would sometimes invite us over for supper closer to 6:00 at night, super nice, but they had no idea of schedules of families with kids.  Krista and I had a nighttime routine and I still do with my kids.  It's the way that things go so that the kids go off to sleep well, at the best time for them to get their rest and at the best time for us to relax a little bit before falling into bed.  We had already eaten and the kids were about to start their baths soon and then we had to get their pajamas on and then read a story and then pray and then sing a little song, and then bedtime.  Busting out for a late supper would mess up the routine, the kids would probably get to bed late and then they would be mental the next day or two.  (We were a bit too anal sometimes, but our kids really do function best on a schedule, and so do I)  Until Nicole and Chris had Ella they just couldn't understand.  Not their fault, it's just really hard to understand someone else's situation until you are in it.  "Walk a mile in someone else's shoes" as it were.  Nicole has told me numerous times that she wishes she could tell Krista, "I get it now!"  My sister is frickin' GOLD.

DOG people.  Actually more, CAT people.  Actually, PET people.  I was never a pet person.  I never had a pet growing up and never really wanted one to be honest.  I like pets, I love to play around with other people's dogs and stuff but I am just fine not to have one of my own.  I don't understand pet people.   You know what I  mean, people who think the world revolves around their pets.  The ones who make facebook statuses about them as though their pets are on par with human children.  I just don't feel that way.  I especially don't get CAT people.  Cats are arrogant.  All the cats I have come in contact with anyway.  Arrogant or mental.  I'm talking Demon possesed mental.  In university I housesat for my coach while he was coaching for the national team and he had a cat named Tindle who was a demon I swear.  Look at that cat wrong and you were afraid to go around the corner for fear that a claw was going to come from a springing cat high above you, right at your jugular.  I bought a LOT of Fancy Feast to appease that mental case that summer.  It worked.  Kittens are cute, the problem is, they grow into cats.   Sorry to all the cat people out there, I just don't get you.

Krista and I had a dog named Jasper.  We bought it the second year we were married because Krista had always had a dog when she grew up and she wanted one again.  The argument we had over getting a dog was heated to say the least!  You all know what happened.  We got the dog.  Jasper was a dog that was a border collie lovechild with something else.  Whatever the case, I am sure that one of the parents was mentally deficient.  Jasper had a lot of quirks.  We bought him from the shelter, the people thought he had been a beaten dog because as soon as any large male came close he cowered and started peeing all over the place.  That was pretty heartbreaking and you just wanted to love him.  He was a cute little sucker too.

Even when he did something bad, like eating and entire vat of Vaseline, or butter, or the edge of a couch, or crapping all over the kitchen and front room, he looked at you like, "I'M SORRY DAD, I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED I JUST LOVE YOU I just love....) The thing is I believed him every time.  When he ate  that Vaseline, Krista and I took him for a walk and he started to wiggle, his routine before he pooped, and then he exploded a mix of feces and petroleum jelly out of his anus unlike anything I have ever seen.  It just sprayed on this white picket fence.  It was seriously one of the funniest things I have ever seen until I realized that stuck on the fur around his bum was the same mix of stuff.  Do you think Krista EVER cleaned this stuff up?  If you guess yes, you are wrong.  It was me.  I didn't even want this frickin' dog and now I am shampooing and trimming with scissors (the only way it was going to come off) the hair around a dogs anus.  "Is this really happening?" I was asking myself.  We had Jasper for a few years then gave him to the SPCA after Grace was born. It just wasn't fair to him, we didn't have the proper time to walk him and he needed that.  It was in his blood.  He was adopted the next day by a family with three boys on an acreage out of town.  I am sure he got a lot of running in there.  I was sad when I dropped him off, even though I couldn't handle him anymore, but he was still part of our life. I am sorry dog people, fish people, hamster people, guinea pig people, people who spend inordinate amounts of money on things that aren't human.  It doesn't mean my way is right, not at all!  I'm just saying that I don't get you. (sidenote:  I do know where you can get really good supplies for your pets if you are pet people. Just For Pets in Lethbridge always was great.  The people who run it are great and they have the best beef tendons out there. Not that I have eaten them.  Jasper LOVED those suckers...)

I find that being a parent to three kids is enough work for me right now let alone trying to figure out what to do with a dog or cat or salamander or fish.  There are a bunch of people out there that will be thinking right now, "It's a great way to teach a child responsibility and how to love something."  I guess I think that there are many more useful ways for ME to teach my kids that stuff. I understand parent people.  I don't understand "MY KID" parent people, and I say this realizing that I am a "MY KID" person sometimes too.  I am not saying that I am perfect.  There is a difference between a Parent and a MY KID propaganda machine parent.  I don't like when people talk about their kids' achievement all the time, or how great they are doing, or how awesome they are in a sport or something like that.  (Some single people are probably reading this going, "TOTALLY! I am so sick of hearing about my married friend's kids!")  I am fortunate that I can't think of anyone significant in my life who does this, but when I run across those people I get tire of them quickly.  That may make me a jerk, I guess I am just being honest.  Doesn't mean that I shouldn't work on my patience, or point the finger back at myself and evaluate how I am doing things.

What's your point man? Some of you may have been asking. If you haven't stopped reading yet, my point is this.  Just because you may not understand someone else and their lifestyle doesn't make yours more right than theirs.  I guess, what I mean is that there is so little room for conversation today.  People may not agree with my beliefs or moral values as a person who says they are a Christian, but I would hope that they don't just tie me in to a bunch of stereotypes because of that label.  I think there should be room for people to talk about philosophies of life and not necessarily need to win the conversation.  If you don't agree with me it doesn't mean I don't like you, and if I don't agree with you, I would hope it would be the same way.

We see this world through the biased view of our own experiences.  We don't really have another choice.  As we age and get out and around this planet we are exposed to a VAST amount of differences that can be mindmelting when we realize that there is an ENTIRE world of people living completely different lives than our own.  This can be overwhelming when on starts to evaluate what one believes.  Unless we attempt to understand the people through their experiences, not our own we cannot have a starting point for good conversation.  We need to be PEOPLE PEOPLE.  That is a hard thing to do.  I am not always too great at that.  For me to truly listen to someone else I can't judge their life based on what happened to me.  I can try and relate to them based on what has gone on in my life, but I can't judge them.  I guess I have realized that I want to be more humble so that I can truly make an attempt at understanding people "where they are at" not all the while thinking about "where they could get to" or how I can get them to "get somewhere".  I suppose I really have appreciated people encouraging me along the way, but only after I can see that they truly care about the person who I am at that moment.  The sum of my parts resulting from my life experience up to that moment when we talked.  Then we can work on future growth.  Otherwise I just think they are know-it-alls who just like to hear themselves talk so that they can feel good about where they are at.  They're not really trying to understand me, they are trying to help themselves feel good by thinking they are helping me.  Sometimes the difference is a fine line.  I hope you get what I mean.

I am saying that I don't want to judge people, I want to know them.  That's relationship.  That's what I hope I can do most of the time.  Sometimes I am just full of hot air though.  Sorta like this blog post...oh dear.