The Island Of The Good Christian Dog Mother

It’s been the sort of week I think most people dread. So far there has been no great tragedy. No relative has been hit by a train while trying to rescue a hat. No jobs have been lost or grave illnesses diagnosed. Knock wood.

But there has been a theme of stuckness. Of blockage. Two toilets stopped up, three kidney stones and one long bout of insomnia. Okay, so insomnia only counts if you look at it as a sleep blockage. But the person who suffers from it would doubtless count it. For once it’s not me but my intrepid spouse. He’s starting to look harrowed. Are people harrowed by harrowing things? They are today.

The good part is that I’m looking at two weeks of living with three dogs. It’s been a long time since there have been three dogs under this roof. The last time I wasn’t even here to enjoy it. I was in Gatlinburg while my husband got the three dogs to himself.

I’ve gone back to the comments section of the blog entry from last week where I talk about shelter dogs and have gradually come to a relisation.

I have spent as little time as possible in the world of mommy blogs, but I do have friends who write them so I will occasionally dip my toe in that pool. There was always something that vaguely bothered me. Well, a lot of things, really. But one thing I couldn’t quite articulate. But then as I reread the comments from that Barbara person whom I do not even know it dawned on me.

There are some people who believe that their life experience has imbued them with a level of knowledge unattainable by anyone else. Even though their experience is in a relatively common area. Like having children or having dogs or being a Christian. But for some reason–insecurity or loneliness or rampant ego–they assume that the passion they draw from that experience conveys a degree of mystical rightness about the subject.

Any time another person has a different version of that experience they seem to experience a tidal flood of emotion. First there seems a bit of envy. After all this is THEIR special thing. They are The Good Mother or The Dog Lady or The Super Christian. The mere fact that someone else would claim to have entered their territory is offensive. I remember this feeling when other girls had crushes on Richard Hatch (of Battlestar Galactica, not Survivor) or Parker Stevenson when I was 8. The next step comes when they start to reassert their primacy over the topic by deciding that the other people know NOTHING about being a mother or having a dog or being a Christian.

Come to think of it, I see a lot of this in ‘Conservative’ politics now, too. This idea that the ideas themselves must be owned and cannot be shared is followed by desire to boot all comers from the ideological island. No one loves Jesus or the Right Wing or Edward or Jacob more than this lady and she’ll tell you why.

For awhile I couldn’t figure out what made me so angry about Barbara’s comments. The more I thought about it I realised it was that self-righteous get-off-my-cloud business that has annoyed me ever since J—– H— told me in first grade that Jesus loved her more than me because He made her with prettier handwriting. But there was also the part about how I knew nothing about dogs.

My dogs are my life. They own my whole heart and as stupid as it sounds (some guy at my old job even yelled at me once for saying it) I would give my life for my dogs. I love them that much. To be told by a stranger who does not know me and was not there for the long nights I lay on the floor holding my whimpering Berner as he died from cancer that I know nothing about dogs grates on me.

It grates on me the same way it does when some Tea Party zealot tells me I’m not a true libertarian because I am not spending Easter Sunday protesting the government.

The world is big and the people in it are many. Experiences will not always be the same. But to assume that all experiences which differ from ones own are wrong is a childish way of seeing.