Last week, I went to the corner shop and as I stood waiting to pay, a tall, elegant man with silver hair stood beside me. He held a little Yorkshire Terrier in his arms, and after he’d paid and left, another customer commented that the dog was “A girl dog, not a guy dog.” He was not referring to the sex of the animal.
Now, I understand the laughter behind his comment, for I too have made joking judgments on similar things (i.e. calling Toyota Solera a hair stylist’s car, not a man’s car), but what threw everything into perspective as I stood in line behind the counter was that I happened to know the elegant silver haired gentleman and knew also that the little dog was not his, but his girlfriend’s. She died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 38 earlier this year, and since her death he has diligently cared for the animal, taking it for walks twice a day and taking it along with him on errands.
I did not say anything to the man who made the comment, but the situation did make me think about how we look at people from the outside and often make comments and judgments without fully understanding what is going on in their worlds. And of course it’s not possible to fully understand their lives completely, nor is it possible to completely avoid passive judgments that are circumstantially unwarranted, but it’s important to acknowledge our incomplete information and our misunderstanding of people as we go forth and make judgments about them.
