Different strokes for different folks

I was at a place the other day and was visiting with a friend of mine when a lady she knew walked by. The lady is probably 50 or so and is slim and pretty good looking. My friend mentioned to me that she doesn't care for vegetables of any kind. I was surprised. Most women really go for veggies, while most men go for the meat and potatoes. I don't want to, but I probably could become a vegetarian. I probably could do it a week or two until someone fried up a skillet of bacon.

But when it comes down to it, all of us have our likes and dislikes. I tend to like all kinds of veggies, but there are some I do not enjoy. I'm not fond of eggplant. I can eat it, but I don't enjoy it. I'm not fond of the taste, but also am not fond of the texture. It has a kind of mushy feel. If I could find a way of making it crunchy, I'd probably like it more.

One food I simply can't get down is mincemeat pie. I just can't do it. It won't go down. We stopped at our pastor's house back in Nebraska, and she had just made a fresh mincemeat pie and wanted us to try it. I hadn't had it before, so why not? Mistake. I didn't want to be rude, but I simply couldn't swallow it. It reminded me of raisins that Mom used to cook. She would put them in rice or oatmeal and they'd be slimy, and even the rice or oatmeal would be slimy. The only way I could eat them was alone with sugar. So I'd pick out the raisins and sugar them up and eat them.

Leroy, a friend of mine, grew up northeast of Cape Girardeau in a good Lutheran home. Leroy likes head cheese, blood pudding and all that good German food. I can do the head cheese but can't do the blood pudding. I can do his bologna salad that he makes. Man, that stuff is awesome, but not the blood pudding. I can take a slice of head cheese and put it with crackers and, now, that's pretty good.

Years ago we used to take care of a church camp up by Sam A. Baker. Camp Lee was just a fun place to go and unwind and spend some time. One time we had a group from Michigan stay overnight. They had brought some deer steaks, so we proceeded to cook them over an open fire. It was dark out, but I was sitting so that I could kind of see the steaks in the lights from the building. I noticed that one of the steaks had a few pieces of hair on it. I wanted my steak extra done that night. I figured the fire would take care of all the hair. It actually tasted pretty good. I did eat it with a bunch of ketchup on it.

Some people like Starbucks, but I don't. Marge likes McDonald's. I can eat it, but it's not my favorite. Many of my friends like Folgers coffee, and I can drink it. I like coffee from Guatemala, Ethiopia or Costa Rica. I don't care for sweet tea, but many of our friends only drink sweet tea. I never have cared for candy bars like 3 Musketeers, but man I like Snickers or Almond Joy. My mom liked Mars. My favorite back then was a Planter's Peanut Bar, which I thought was awesome. Another one I like is Heath. I'm betting if we asked 50 people what their favorite candy bar is we'd end up with 40 or more different names.

We usually buy seven baby Jersey calves every year, then bottle feed them until we wean them. I usually start them on grain as soon as they will eat it. It's funny but about every year we get one that doesn't like grain. He may take a bite or two, but that's about all he wants. The others will eat until they get a belly ache. There's always one that just doesn't like the grain I buy, which has molasses on it.

Some of us drive a Chevy while others drive a Ford. Some drive a Dodge and others drive a Toyota. Some of our friends drive a Kia. Some drive simple, plain cars while others want all the luxuries and the fancies. A guy I used to work for liked buckskins, grullas, duns or grey horses. As long as I knew him he never owned a bay or brown horse.

Since I raise a big garden and sell produce, I try raise all kinds of tomatoes. Some of the tomatoes are purple or almost black, some yellow, some orange, and of course some are red. Some people will only buy the purple or dark ones, like Cherokee purple. For some, a tomato has to be red. I kind of like all the colors. There are days when a good juicy red one is just right. The other night a big, juicy, yellow tomato was just perfect, but on other days it's a Cherokee purple and a red big beef. I enjoyed them all.

Our differing tastes hold true for spouses, homes, friends, clothes and the list goes on and on. One difference I find amusing are the haircuts. I had a Mohawk back in college. I sure wouldn't do that today. Wouldn't our world be boring if we all liked the same things? I enjoy the differences. Sometimes we gripe about the differences, but instead we should really celebrate these differences.

I'll bet the artist who created our world really enjoyed building in all the differences. I bet there are days he smiles after creating a new baby or two.