Similarities

"You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same.”
-Jonathan Davis   
(I just thought that quote was funny, but it doesn’t really have that much to do with my blog post... They both talk about similarites and differences, but that's about it...)

      Thinking about Sarah Vowell’s “Shooting Dad” made me think about my own similarities with my dad. Like Vowell and her father, I consider myself very different than my father; we have different tastes in music, fashion, and many other things. Also like Vowell, though, we are similar in many ways. For starters, I share the same hair color and eye color with him. We also both like eating many of the same foods (like 湯圓 or tāng yuán! Here’s a link if you don’t know what it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangyuan_%28food%29 ), keeping things organized, knowing things ahead of time, and having specific instructions for things (there are more things, but I think I’ll stop here. I don’t think you guys need to know everything about me). He will also always be my father.

I think a person does not have to have many similarities with another person in order to get along with him/her. Just like the cliché saying of “opposites attract,” people can be opposites and still work well together. One person’s strength may be another’s weakness, and in that way, they make up for each other’s shortcomings and make each other stronger.