I'm A Grandfather
I hate when people refer to themselves as the parents of their pets, or worse, when older adults begin referring to the pets of their grown children as their grandchildren. I'm not quite sure what makes me loathe it so. I have to think that the stoic folk of my great-grandparents' generation weren't giddily anthropomorphizing every whimper and sigh that their four-legged children emitted. Did they send pictures of their pets 'round at Christmastime to help announce the Birth of Christ? Did they screen their cats for HIV/AIDS? Did they take their dogs to "Doggie-Daycare" or the local "pet spa"? Did they spend as much money on their pet's health and entertainment as they did on the children that they actually, biologically produced? No! The salt-of-the-earth, level-headed folk of 70 years ago treated their pets like animals. They chained them outside to a tree, they gave them scraps of food o...