Although I know in a theoretical sense that there are people who think differently than I do, I am still sometimes flabbergasted when I encounter some of this thinking directly. Two recent illustrations:
Illustration #1
My neighbor is the young (22) mom of a 4 year old. The child's father died last year in a motorcyle wreck. Recently she was talking about how upset she was about how little government support she gets. She said her daughter only gets a little Social Security because the father was also young and hadn't paid much into the system. She said that just because he was young doesn't mean her daughter should get less. I'm always shocked when I hear people say the government should take care of them. I truly don't get that. Of course, I couldn't tell her that. As I thought about it later, I wish I could have told her "That's why parents should have life insurance". Of course, it's too late for that now, and it's not my place.
Illustration #2
I was telling a coworker how excited my 2 year old niece was to get candy for Halloween. She doesn't get it often, and I was saying how happy I was that my sister and brother-in-law feed her good healthy food. He said he thought kids should get to eat whatever they want when they are young as they have the whole rest of their lives to eat according to rules. And he was SERIOUS. I was stunned. This is the only time you can completely control what your kids eat. You are also setting their eating patterns for life, whether for good or bad.
Both of these situations floored me. I think it is good to have such experiences occasionally so we are reminded that there are people out there whose mindsets are very different from our own.
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