Tonight Vilma and I were talking about her neighbors in her village in the Philippines.
Vilma was telling me that she had several neighbors that spent a great deal of time teaching animals to talk. Apparently you teach dogs and cats to talk the same way that you would teach a baby to talk.
You practice with them every day, and it is best to start when they are very young. Of course, you begin with the simple words, and work your way to the more difficult ones. Sometimes the neighbors would shout at the animals because they were not making any progress. Many times it would be a group effort, and many of the neighbors would work with one dog or cat.
Every day they would see animals on television talking, and therefore it just had to be possible....
There are still many parts of the world that have never heard of special effects, or computer animation. If they see it on television or the movies, it just has to be true.
If a person dies, or a baby is born, or if a table dances, they believe everything that they see.
Of course Vilma understands that the talking animals in the movie "Cats and Dogs" are not real.
But that is not the way that she was brought up.
I'm not posting this to embarass Vilma, or any other person. The reason that I am posting this is to try to explain to the newbies that it is a very, very different world out there. Many things that we take for granted is not known or understood in the rest of the world. So, for the newbies, when you think you know everything there is to know about your penpal, please stop and consider that
she just might not be viewing the world in the same way that you do.
Have Fun,
Don
P.S. Just try talking to your penpal about vampires, witches, and other superstitions, it will be a very interesting conversation.
