Growing up is learning what should have happened that didn't happen.

Portage is so foreign from Kalamazoo, and I miss my home.  I was walking home last night along Westnedge, which becomes a festival of neon the further south you go, and there was a hyped up blond couple walking toward me carrying signs that said, "Christmas.  What did you forget?"  Just to break the ice I asked them casually, "Who do you work for?"  The aggressive male, not releasing the death grip he had on his girl's hand, replied, "I work for Jesus.  Who do you work for?" at which point I stopped to think.  They were advancing so rapidly that I hardly had time and so I just spat out, "Not Jesus," by which time they had passed me and he said over his shoulder (with that cold nonchalance that I grew up accustomed to in Portage) "That's too bad."

But I wish I had told them who I do work for, or at least asked him, "Who is Jesus?" because quite possibly they think Jesus is God, in which case we could have discovered that we all work for the same force.  But I was too prejudiced and juvenile, and my ankles were sore from trucking around in the heavy brown boots.

Speaking of common ground, last night after I came home my dad said something cynical and sarcastic about Christmas, and I laughed.  What a strange surprise to find out we were both cynical and sarcastic about the same thing for once.  So there is the rare patch of common ground.