learning" period somehow come to mind and ring true later in life.
The following quote fits with my current thoughts, though not like a
glove =) It is a quote from Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald:
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just
remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages
that you've had."
I have had two humourous miscommunications in the last three days
which make this quote seem tremendously relevant in my life at the
minute :-) The first occured with my housemate. My grandmother sent
me a cartoon with a old women at her optometrist's office; she's
standing in front of the receptionist and asks if the woman minds
holding her cat while she gets her eyes checked. The "cat" is very
obviously a skunk. I found the joke cute and handed it to my
housemate only to discover that he didn't "get" the cartoon as he'd
never seen a skunk and thus didn't see the humour :-)
More recently, I had a British friend visit for a few days. I went
away for the weekend but was scheduled to be back later the night he
arrive. I told him that I'd leave my house key under the pylon at the
front of my house so he could get in since he was arriving before I
was. He texted me from Melbourne (I was three hours outside of town
rock climbing) saying that the key didn't work. Now I'd told him that
it was a bit loose and may need a bit of wiggling but I couldn't
understand how he couldn't get the lock open after a half hour of
playing with the key and the lock!! I made other arrangements for him
to be able to leave his stuff and subsequently felt horrible for the
rest of the day; aware that he couldn't get in because my key wasn't
working, etc... I arrived home to discover that he'd found a key
under the doormat and had assumed that that was a "pylon" since he
didn't know what one was and had been using that key (which is the key
to something else). It turns out that a pylon in Cdn is a witch's hat
in Aus and a construction cone in England....who would have expected
that something so simple would have so many names?! Either way, the
key I left him worked like a charm when it was located :-)
Just a random thought to remind myself and anyone else reading this
that despite the fact that we've been raised with many commonalities,
there are always huge differences in experience and interpretation ;)
I'll stop being philosophical now and head off to bed...hope you
enjoyed my silly stories ;)
Sarah
