One kid’s cool is another kid’s gross

It was a groggy school morning.  Our two junior-highers were sitting at the table eating breakfast in their usual fashion – heads down, quiet, keeping to themselves.  I stood at the sink working on the dishes, when the silence was broken with a disgusted, “Ugh….oh….eich!”  Our 13 year old daughter abruptly pushed her chair back and walked out of the kitchen.  Our 11 year old boy continued eating his cereal, his back towards me.  I didn’t know what, if anything happened, so I kept to myself.  I was tired too.

About a minute later, our 6^th grade boy got up from the table, turned towards me with cereal bowl in hand, and a very interesting look on his face.  You know the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes?  He had the look of Calvin on his face.  It’s hard to put it into words, but the expression on his face was a quiet, delighted satisfaction.  Not the kind of delight that you work really hard for and are then rewarded; rather, the kind of satisfaction that comes when you’ve been given an unexpected gift.  It was pure delight.

“What happened?” I said.  “Did you sneeze?”  “Yeah,” he said. “And my cereal came out my nose.”  He couldn’t have looked more pleased.  He padded out of the kitchen before I could process the entire scene, but soon the conclusion hit me:  One kid’s cool is another kid’s gross! 

What a demonstration of how people see things.   What a perfect example of differing perspectives!  How DO we put up with each other?  It struck me that if I asked my daughter about this table encounter with her brother she would describe it completely differently than he.  And, if I asked her about it 20 years from now, I’m pretty sure she would still have a disgusted look on her face as she described it.  How would he describe it?  I highly doubt there would be any look of disgust on his face or in his voice! The same story – but two very different adjectives used to describe it:  delight and disgust!

What a picture of marriage.  What a picture of friendship.  What a picture of the human existence.  This past week I discovered that my husband and I have very different perspectives on how we look at part of the Bible.  I was kind of shocked at how opposite we were.  God and the Bible are at the core of who we are as people; so after 22 years of marriage to find out that we had such strong opinions and that they were so different was pretty wild!  Over the years people have said to us:  “You guys are so different.”  I never realized how different until this last week!  (He’ll come around). 

If someone were to ask me how we manage to keep a marriage strong when we are so different, I think my answer would be, “Two things:  I know he loves me, and I know he is imperfect.”  And the same is true of me.  So, there you have it, yet another example of love in my adventure of how to love people better.  We’re commanded by God to love each other so there is always SOME way to do it. 

Gotta tell ya, I’m typing this fast because I need to be somewhere…but even as I type my husband stands 20 feet directly in front of me singing the theme song from the Love Boat show, loudly - obnoxiously.  I am not kidding.  And I just told him to shut up and stop singing AT me.  He claims he was singing it “into the AIR”.  Right.  He works very hard to get me to react – and is often successful.  Yes, I did just call him an idiot (the reaction he was looking for); but he knows I love him and I know he loves me, imperfect though we are. 

One person’s “air” is another person’s “at.”