Yesterday at the latest Pasadena City Council meeting a woman pulled me aside and wanted to talk to me about Pit Bulls. She promised that she was a dog lover, but that Pit Bulls were different. She repeatedly told me that she was “scared” of them, and that she is always “hearing things” that clearly serve to fulfill her own mind’s accepted prophecy. I was being really nice to her, and it was actually quite a cordial conversation, but she wouldn’t give me an inch on the subject while repeatedly reverting back to what she’s “heard” instead.
She noted a personal friend’s experience with 1 dog from over 15 years ago and held onto it like it was evidence to condemn them all. I asked her if she’d at least acknowledge for me that there were millions of these dogs in and around the country. She said no, that she couldn’t. She told me that she fell out of an elevator years back and messed up her leg, and that the last thing she wants to worry about is having to be attacked by a Pit Bull. Coincidentally she was at this meeting to request a ban on leaf blowers. As she was telling me about her elevator story I was wondering to myself if she ever desired to ban elevators too.
She conceded that my dogs were probably nice, but that they were the exception. I tried to tell her that 1 visit to any shelter of her choice would prove that logic wrong, but she blew my point off, telling me yet again that what she’s “heard” is far too much to ever have her view change. She told me that she’s uninterested in meeting any Pit Bulls because she’s scared of them.
I’m still not quite sure why she pulled me aside, because she was so extraordinarily stuck in her ways and flatly opposed to some of my most basic points. It’s like she wanted to see if I had a magical answer to her astronomical fear, and when I suggested the obvious, that she just go meet a few, she immediately wrote me off as someone who just doesn’t get it. Maybe she was so oblivious to how her own position made her look that she genuinely thought her opinion would somehow serve to rub off on me instead? Could that have actually been it? I don’t know, but it was odd nonetheless.
The 2nd meeting started and our communication came to a close. I was so sad to see someone so terrified and living in literal fear over this notion that millions of dogs are bad, and further, that they are out to get her. What kind of life is that? And why does my dog have to be maligned because another person is out there being so closed-minded and fearful of the world around them? It’s quite depressing and ridiculous. The folks with their perspectives so tightly crafted in whatever corner of whatever world, with no desire to hear or even think on another point of view, are the same folks that refuse any kind of interaction or experiences that would possibly lend to shedding some of that irrational fear. Fear is so devastating to this world. It kills everything.