In response to last week’s question, "How is it that when worn once, shirts and underwear are dirty but pants aren't?", my dad's beach buddy Bob concluded, "Because they have liners on the inside.  It is called underwear," to which my birthday bud Jon expounded, "The pants have the underwear to thank for that! They took the hit."

When my sailing friend Kurt responded, "They aren't?", my Parrothead friend Sam explained, "It's not that the pants aren't dirty... Simply, the pants are further from people 's vision and we notice the dirt less."   And my IT friend Kosol added "Oh yes. they're dirty, just not smelly. They don't contact your skin directly like a shirt or underwear does.  Now if you don't wear underwear, I hope you're not using pants more than once.  That would just be awful!" 

My social media friend Mark shared, "You can stretch your underwear one more day by turning them inside out. But then your pants frequency changes."

My writing and sailing friend Rich pondered, "They say you never understand someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. I am guessing a mile in their underwear is too much information."  And my cycling friend Ted  responded, "There was a musical episode of the series "Scrubs" which I think says it all-- 'It all comes down to Poo.' "

Please share your thoughts about "things that make you go 'Hmmm' “:

 

Why do "overlook" and "oversee" mean opposite things?

Live well...laugh often and heartily.... have a good week and never regret anything that made you smile!

Hal

In response to a prior question about why people talk to dog in full sentences, my sailing friend Norman wrote, "I am positive my dog, Gracie,  understands every word we say to her.  Maybe she can't speak, but, her vocabulary is extensive.  If you need proof, come on by and we can have a conversation with her." 

And my friend with start-up www.rallyin.com explained, "There is a scientific study -- well done study -- showing dogs can and do understand full sentences. To take it further: The woman (whose name I don't know), who started the assistive dogs thing a few decades ago, has been experimenting and training dogs -- including Golden retrievers -- to read  ... not just single words, but also word combinations and strings of words. 

As she puts the single words together in different combinations on placards, a dog has to glean contextual meaning -- the context of each word in its relative position and then grasp the full meaning of the sentence -- and then respond accordingly (e.g., go to the restroom and bring me a towel).  She trains the dog to recognize the idea of written symbolic language -- now that in itself is mind blowing. 

There is also a solid body of well-done scientific work that is not anthropomorphic and shows that dogs emotionally really do care. This is wonderfully amazing. They care!

There's an interesting though painfully dull reading book published for public consumption in the past five years called "Inside a Dog". It's worth plodding through. It resulted from studies about this kind of stuff at Columbia University.   I understand the issue of anthropomorphism and its potential for interfering with perceiving what is really going on inside of a dog. But, it turns out that, anthropomorphism removed, dogs are actually very much what we think they are and know ... or as a friend of mine once put it, "Dogs are people too, ya know."  

It's no bit of fantasy or wishful thinking or anthropomorphism after all that dogs and people deeply bond and sincerely love each other and connect spiritually and communicate as we do. It's the real thing. It's unique. And what a blessing and gift for both of us. For those that insist on the science to prove it, it's there too now. 

So, don't kid yourself that dogs don't get it. And you can sense and "see" that they get things we don't get. 

     

[Thanks to Demetri Martin, Steven Wright and George Carlin for the inspiration.]