I remember being in high school at a friend's house, and I heard her say something to her mom that would have caused me to possibly have my teeth put in my lip if I ever said it to my mom, if you know what I mean. We just didn't do that in my family.
Another friend always got to go out and stay out until whenever he wanted, and I was lucky to squeeze an extra half hour out of my parents (cop's kids, you know). I complained to my mom whenever I couldn't do what my friends got to do and the answer was always the same, "that's them and this is us. This is the way we do things." I'm sure the eye rolls as I turned around were always heavy. In fact, I know they were. I'm a professional eye roller. As I entered college, adulthood, the work force, I still saw (and see) many things happen that surprise me or strike me as odd, unfair, not right. My kids in my class will tell me about something that happened to them and my answer to them is often the following: everyone wasn't raised like you. Our viewpoints are all different. We base what we do and how we act off of our experiences and the way we grew up, and while we see right and wrong, "right" and "wrong" are slightly different for everybody. You don't have to agree with everyone else (shoot, you don't have to agree with ANYONE else), but if you're trying to understand why people act the way they do, it's so important to remember that not everyone was raised like you. It also makes it a whole lot easier to get along with people when you don't have the choice of whether or not to be around them. Like when you have a job.
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