fbhjr | From kehlen

Kehlen is doing a meme where you ask people three things to discuss.
If anyone wants me to give them some discussion topics I can. But, that’s up to you. I won’t just pick folks to give them to.

These are the three given to me:
1. Modern weaponry.
2. Poetry.
3. Keeping pets at home.

Modern Weaponry:
That’s a big one. After all, for 90% of human history, we used rocks and sticks. So, anything beyond that is modern, right?
I can’t lie, I really like my bronze sword. There is something about you don’t get with that modern steel..

I will say, I’m not a fan of guns.
I’m not saying others can’t be. I just don’t like them.

For me, they are too easy, too fast.
Modern guns can get off multiple handfuls of bullets before the brain can fully process what it is seeing.
That is probably good if the other person is pulling a gun on you.
It is pretty tragic if they were going for their phone.
I don’t like death before reaction time. It’s dangerous.

Personally, I think it is time we stopped throwing little rocks at each other anyhow and figure out something better.

Poetry:
I’ve never gotten along well with poetry.
I like the concept. And, I have a high regard for folks who can speak in rhyme.
But, that’s not the same as real poetry.

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, growing up I was diagnosed with lots of learning disabilities. There are certainly times I still get mad at my inability to tell left from right. It gave me trouble just yesterday when trying to explain to my wife which buttons to push on her phone.

But, and maybe this is just my ego, I don’t categorize the fact that I think is a different way than most as a disability the way my teachers did half a century ago.
When I was young it did cause me lots of trouble as my thinking and communication was out of sync with my teachers and that caused a lot of communications problems.
I spent a lot of time in special needs classes. I had guidance counselors call me stupid. I had people who were supposed to be helping me learn say that it wasn’t worth the effort.

Then, after about half a decade of this, I got tired of it and decided that I didn’t want them to think I was stupid and instead would do what it took to make them think I was smart.
That involved a complete retooling of how I communicated with others.

I was 9 at the time. So, that change did not incorporate everything I might have if I did it now.
And, poetry was not really in my world view then.
So the translator from English to what my wife calls “Frankspeak” does not work well on it.

It doesn’t help that my mother, in an attempt to improve my handwriting and give my culture at the same time, made my hand copy the works of Shakespeare when I was 11. I did not learn any of his material as I just copied it letter for letter and was turned off by it in general.

Over the last 4 decades, I’ve come to appreciate some of it. But, not all that much.

Keeping pets at home:
I often tell people I was raised by a dog.
This is because all the photos of me when a baby have my sister’s dog standing near me. No human is in as many photos as that dog.
Over the years either my wife or I have had dogs, cats, ginny pigs, rabbits, snakes, turtles and probably a few others I can’t think of right now.

Right now my wife and I don’t have any pets and haven’t since the snake died about 15 years ago.
We both miss not having them, but we travel a lot and it would be difficult for the pet if we had one. They’d either be left behind a lot or we’d have to bring them to places that don’t always look kindly on them.

I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who has pets at home. The exception is people who don’t take proper care of them and/or have so many they are overwhelmed.
But, if you take good care of them, then I think it is a great idea.