You Disagree?... We Can Be Friends Now

I love to talk. And when I say that, what I mean is that I love to converse. To hear someone else's perspective on things that I have thought and learned about, or to hear something completely new. To present my own ideas and have feedback, whether positive or negative, from another person. And it is for this very reason that I have the close friends that I do.

I think that there are few people in this world who feel free to disagree with someone else, or present an opposing argument during a conversation and not feel so overwhelming passionate that they wind up offended in the end. My closest friends are the people who I can talk to, tell my stories to, share my opinions with and they might not always agree with what I say and they tell me. People who care enough to tell me when I am nuts or crazy or just all out wrong.

Recently I was having a conversation with a close friend of mine. She and I live in different parts of the States so we don't see each other that often, but when we do have the opportunity to catch up she feels free to tell me her exact thoughts. We were discussing the new law which passed in the city of Tempe stating that institutions which sell alcohol (clubs and bars) can refuse to permit or serve to any resident of Arizona without a "horizontal licence" (basically, in the state of Arizona you are given a licence that reads vertically if you are less that 21 years of age when you begin driving and that gets changed when you are 21 to a licence that reads horizontally). I thought this was rubbish. Tempe is the closest party place to my home town and the place where all students go to have a really "good time". Since I turned 21 while I was in Europe I simply applied for my new licence online and it was waiting for me when I got back to America, but since the Arizona licence doesn't technically expire until you are 65 I thought that mandating that someone produce a non-necessary identification was going to end up getting the city sued (yes, this is America. We sue for EVERYTHING). My friend argued that clubs and bars were private institutions and that by protecting their assets in the further prevention of selling to minors by mandating a horizontal licence that they were completely within their legal rights. Our conversation continued like this for a half-hour or so and in the end we concluded that we missed each other's company. :-)

When I was in England I was constantly told that I was very bold and very blunt (haha). For people who know me (and are American), I would never be considered bold nor blunt in my own culture, in fact I'm often told I am too passive and gracious if anything. So being in England and being called blunt was a whole new experience for me, but perhaps I am a bit. I don't really understand those people who get offended when you challenge their thoughts, and I have high respect for people who can take critism, and because of this trait I am perhaps a bit more blunt than some people. In America we wouldn't call it blunt though... we would call it honesty. ;-)