Skitter’s Ties o’ the Day offer up this story for your contemplation. Every day, when we still had the Delta house, and I still had a daily Delta/Mom routine, Skitter would put on a tie and ask to go with me on my daily Diet-Coke-at-The-Pub visit. At first, I told Skitter she couldn’t go to The Pub with me cuz she was a minor. But when she aged out of minor-hood, I then had to break it to her that she would never be legally allowed in The Pub, or other places like it— simply because she is not a people. She had no idea she was “different”, so it came as an enormous shock to her skittish, canine system.
I explained to Skitter about prejudice and discrimination. About its many forms and guises. About bigots and bullies. About how every living thing is “different” in some way (many ways, in fact), depending on what “they” say is the “norm”. I explained that the categories and mechanisms used to commit bigotry are completely arbitrary. They bear no resemblance to the truth, beauty, and goodness of existence. Bigotry is reductive and riddled with the fear of everything except itself.
Skitter pondered seriously about the in’s and out’s, the up’s and down’s, and the sideway’s of what I had told her. She thought and thought, until her tiny thinker was exhausted. And then she said, “But I can still wear the ties, right?”
Now, that’s a nifty perspective: Just go about your life, in wonder and love and ties.