Enemies: We can’t live with them, yet we can’t escape them. Maybe we should try something else.
As a child in the ’60s at Cherrelyn Elementary School in Englewood, I used to think girls at Clayton, eight blocks away, were cruel when they beat my sixth-grade volleyball team and cheered about it. I thought they were aliens.
At Englewood High, girls in metro Denver were a foot taller than I was, so I gave up volleyball and joined the swimming team. We 10 girls, our whole roster, faced a chlorinated pickle when we competed against colossal Cherry Creek. In the freestyle relay, all four of Creek’s third-string girls would finish the relay, drive home and finish their trig homework before our first girl had left the starting block. I thought they were aliens, too.
Then, I went to the School of Mines in the early ’80s, and one of my suitemates was from Cherry Creek. She drove a Civic, not a BMW, and sometimes she caught colds and wiped her nose with tissues. She was tall, beautiful and not lacking for a sturdy backpack, but it seemed she was a human being as well.
At 54, I’ve noticed a pattern: Sometimes the person you thought was your enemy can become the person who loans you their well-tuned sedan once you get to know them.
At this age, I’m starting to think about what happens after this life. Do members of the Islamic State fall into molten lava pools, will Bill Belichick end up in the “highly offensive” section of heaven, and the rest of us go to the harp-playing, hometown bench-seating area?
Some believe that Earth is a school, that we’re here to learn, to expand our understanding and capacity to love, and then to move on to another plane or place. What if we all go to the same place? What if it has a freshman orientation week in which we all carry rocks up a hill and place them on a mound to form a giant “A” on Mount Afterlife, but we’re not allowed to stone each other to death with the rocks? What if we’re forced to talk to each other?
Even my border collie mix, Abby, talks to the dog next door, and that dog is a large, short-haired loudmouthed mutt who hates her. Abby doesn’t exactly share her stuffed Santa Claus with it, either, but at least their lines of communication are open. Every day, they run up and down the fence chasing each other, spewing out their feelings.
But there are dogs in the park behind my house whom Abby doesn’t know, doesn’t understand and is terrified of, who every now and then come charging up to us from out of nowhere when we’re on a walk. Abby would have no qualms about attacking one of them if she had to, if she felt threatened.
Right when you think you’ve seen everything, some misguided, zealous idiot on a mission doesn’t play by the rules and everyone else is forced to figure out how to deal with their dog before it reaches our dog.
I hope God is ready for some pushback if we’re all up on that mountainside together. If there’s one thing human beings can’t tolerate, it’s talking to our enemies before we shoot their dogs.
Kathy Ayers works for a health care technology corporation in the Denver Tech Center.
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