Judge not...
As we pulled into the store parking lot, I groused to myself how the woman walking along the sidewalk across the street didn't have her dog on a leash. Granted, the happy dog that danced around her as she walked was keeping close, but still, there's a leash law in our town that all dogs must be on a leash while off the owner's property.
"Jerk," I thought to myself.
She hollered to some folks nearest her in the parking lot.
"Do you have a cell phone? Could you please call the police? This isn't my dog!"
Ah.
The picture now shifted as I watched her continue on her way.
She wasn't walking her dog without a leash. She was being harassed by someone else's loose dog. Fortunately, this dog was a friendly one.
"Poor woman," I thought to myself.
I do judge too swiftly.
I should work on that.
4 comments:
Perfectly normal...I probably would have an a couple extra adjectives to go along with it before realizing my mistake...
I am both sides of that coin:
I have a disabled placard so I can park in handicap parking. I have it because I'm partially crippled. But, when you see me drive up, there's no way the average passerby would see that. So I get all kinds of judgmental looks...until they see me hobble out of the car.
*But* I also give the stink eye to everyone who parks in a handicap space...at least until I can see if they have a placard. (Some disabilities are not necessarily visible (as noted above), so I assume if they have the tag, they're good to go.)
*But*** there's more! I actually got a ticket for parking in a handicap space ($600) because I had forgot to renew my tag and someone reported me...assuming I was scamming! Argh. The cop that wrote me the ticket was a little shamed when he saw me roll up with my walker. But he gave me the ticket anyway!!
So, judge not let ye be judged...with a grain of salt. Or something like that!
That happened to me, once, when I was about 15. I tried starting a jogging regime. This big red dog started jogging along side me through the park, stopping to jump on everyone we passed. All these people kept yelling at me to leash my dog! I had no idea where the dog came from, or why it didn't jump on me, but just ran along side me.
It's a good argument against jogging, for me.
There was another really nice dog who used to go on walks with me. She wasn't my dog, either, but she was so well behaved that no one ever complained about the lack of leash.
The moral of the story is this: I should walk, not jog.
Hey, where are you?
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