Contrast in extremes and sensetivity

So, I was thinking about a conversation that I had once with a colleague when I was a social worker, and we talked about how that when you see horrific things people do to themselves and each other, you can obviously get a little desensitized. You have to, to be able to help people get past them, because a certain part of recovery is desensitization to the event. This is what most people call "getting over it". What was interesting is that even though we have seen and heard incredible things, we all had pet peeves among things we saw or were exposed to, that still effected us. What was interesting is that it wasn't things that we'd commonly expect. This topic was opened up to more people from my team at a lunch, and the trend continued. You'd expect obvious things like spousal abuse or drug addiction to be the pet peeves, but it wasn't the case. We also rarely saw any cases of child abuse, and when we did, we were on the phone to police and social services toot sweet (no messing around on that one), so that one didn't come up as much as you thought.

Instead, it was things like:

• People who choose not to clean. (I emphasize choose, not "be too ill to")
• People who talk and talk and talk about going to meetings, and talk about needing to change, but don't ever actually try.
• Video poker. There is some kind of wierd underground corellation between video poker in Oregon and meth addicts. I wish I knew what it was.
• County employees who can't return a phone call. There is some kind of county policy in place that you are not allowed to return phone or email messages.

As it turned out, and it surprised me a little, mine was animal abuse. Every now and then there were random occurances of it, and it royally pissed me off every time I was exposed to it. It only amplified when we got the skunks. I think for me, it's the knowledge that an animal is completely reliant on its owner and has no higher brain function. An animal can't ask for help, doesn't understand, and if you haven't bothered to train it or raise it right, it doesn't know any better. I guess it hits the same nerve for me that child abuse hits. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to be a vegetarian or join PETA anytime soon, but I also know the difference between running a slaughterhouse and sadism ( http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/16/abused.pigs.ap/index.html ) I also know that there's a statistically high correlation between those that abuse animals and those that commit violent acts on people, to the point that it's a major red flag when it occurs in children.

So anyway. What's the point? There isn't one I guess. I just like animals, that's all.