Not short people, though I'm sure there are some terrible short people, and I don't appreciate it when two heightless people stand on either side of me and talk. I can't hear a dang thing up here in the troposphere.
I'm talking about small children.
Walmart/Aldi/Movie Theaters/Parks/Pools just all the things. They're sticky, they scream (oh Lord they scream), and they decide that your approaching car is the perfect moment to run into the street.
Sometimes, I think, "Parenthood, that sounds like a thing I want in on someday."
Then I go to the grocery store and see a mom with four tiny monsters running around shrieking like they're being kidnapped because they can't buy a box of sugar-based breakfast food (because they need more energy reserves) and bless God for my current celibacy.
After my most recent run-in (run from) involving the small jam-covered ones, I decided to re-brand them.
You know what I think are cute? Dragons. They're adorable. Have you ever seen "Dragon Tales" or "How to Train Your Dragon"? Just the cutest. Baby dragons are all bumping around, accidentally breathing fire, shrieky, and clumsy. Precious.
Since then, I've started pretending that horrible little children are just baby dragons, and they have become so much more tolerable to me.
Sometimes, it takes a change of perspective.
You'll never catch those grammar errors in your paper, you've been looking too long. Change the font and try again.
You never noticed the homeless people in your own city before but change the venue and they're everywhere.
It's easier, I think, to notice and to have compassion for that which we have had little exposure to, like the irony in "The Help" where the white women are raising money for the starving children in Africa but neglect to recognize as barely even human the black folk who serve them.
It isn't right, and it isn't fair, but you may not even recognize the disparity in your thinking. That doesn't give you an excuse, but it does help give some context to what may appear to others as hypocritical.
I know my baby dragon theory is fanciful and silly, but occasionally, re-branding the familiar (even to whimsical levels) can help you appreciate or "see" just a little bit more clearly.
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