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.]
