Pickles, Mayo, and Tabby Girl
On the Strange Things We Inherit Without Realizing It
I may get in trouble for this post, but we will see.
My wife has always told me the reason she only orders pickles on her cheeseburger is because they have to make it fresh. If it’s a restaurant that offers mayo, she’ll get pickles and mayo. Over the years, she has explained that she doesn’t want to eat a burger that’s been sitting around. If she special-orders it, they have to make it fresh. It seemed like a logical argument for the 32 years we’ve been together, even though she takes the pickles off when she starts eating it.
But I witnessed something a few weeks ago that just about knocked me out of my chair.
I had just grilled cheeseburgers. Everyone had gone through the line and filled their plates. We were all eating at the table when, between bites, I started studying the plates around me. My mother-in-law only had pickles and mayo on her cheeseburger. If that wasn’t enough, my father-in-law had taken the pickles off his cheeseburger.
And if you think that’s it, we went through a drive-through for my son later that week, and he only wanted pickles on his cheeseburger.
It’s extraordinary how we become what we learn. Even more fascinating is how we pass those things on to others.
Which brings me to our cat, Tabby Girl.
Tabby Girl don’t stop, won’t stop. She just turned 18 years old and hobbles through the house from top to bottom. She has a swayback and cusses us out every morning. Her belly hangs to the floor which makes her legs look as if they are only a half-inch long. She has short- and long-term memory loss (try to figure that one out). And she is deeply in love with Caroline, who was five years old when we got her. Side note—Caroline bought foam stairs that go from the floor to her bed so Tabby Girl can still sleep with her. I have much more to say about Tabby Girl, but I’ll save that for another day and another post.
The thing about Tabby Girl is that we took her to the vet when she was still young because she had small patches of hairless sores on her chin. The vet said she had a condition called feline acne. Apparently, the condition develops when cats do not adequately wash and groom themselves. He explained that it was likely Tabby Girl’s mother never taught her how to clean herself. As a result, I tried to teach her by licking my hand and wiping my face… just kidding on that part.
Our lives are weird and complicated. Like pickles and mayo, we learn things a certain way. Or like Tabby Girl, we fail to learn the things we desperately need in order to function well. Many times, we do things simply because it’s the way we were taught, or because no one ever showed us another way. We move through life carrying habits, assumptions, fears, and behaviors we never consciously chose for ourselves.
And maybe one of the hardest parts of being human is realizing that some of what feels most natural to us was simply inherited. Sometimes wisdom is not learning something new at all. Sometimes it is finally stopping long enough to ask why we have been doing it that way in the first place.
Question
What habits, beliefs, or behaviors in my life have I simply inherited without ever questioning?
Peace,
Brandon