Differences

When I was in elementary school, I played on and around the monkey bars and played soccer in the field with my friends during recess and lunch times. In high school my new ways of amusing myself were hanging out at the mall with my friends, playing basketball and volleyball, and walking around in my neighbourhood. My leisure activities changed when I got to university; having bubble tea, going for drives, dancing at clubs, and playing at the billiards hall were my favourite pasttimes then. In my post-university years while I tried to kick start my career, I expanded my local activities to helping out at soup kitchens and sandwich runs and attending jazz festivals, art exhibitions, theatre sports, comic festivals, and choral concerts. As a Vancouverite, I take for granted that these local activities were the kinds of things that people do while they are in the city.

Then I moved to Mission.

All of a sudden, I found new ways that Missionites amused themselves. I was in my care group and some of them shared what they did on the weekends. Apparently, most of them own guns, some of them own several guns, and they went into the mountains to shoot pumpkins that were left over from the October harvest. Yup, just "shootin' on the range!"
Some of the people have put quarters and loonies on train tracks and would wait up to an hour for a train to come by and squish the coins into the size of a pancake. I asked, "Isn't it illegal to do anything that might alter train tracks?" and my question was received with a bunch of shrugs and chuckles that said, "Oh well. No trains have derailed since we started doing it."

Now don't get me wrong. I really, really, really like the people in my care group. They are a bunch of wonderful and friendly folks. But, shooting pumpkins and potentially derailing trains with coins and gum haven't crossed my mind as fun activities, although now that they have been brought up, they do fill me with a sense of wonder and, dare I say, adventure! Ha, ha! Don't go looking for me by the train tracks or in the gun shop anytime soon, though!