We have a guest coming for dinner tonight.  He is the nephew of a highly regarded friend of mine and we have not met him. Pretty much all I know about him is the family tie and that he is an opera singer. It is this last piece of information, scant though it is, which sent me down the path of pondering the things in the world that I just don’t get.

Quite clearly that could indeed be a long list, but before my coffee arrived at my table I had it down to three major items. I don’t get the hate that is part and parcel of every major non asian based religion. It seems to me that each of these religious groups for one reason or another breeds hate. I just don’t get it. On one hand they give lip service to love and acceptance while they perpetuate or even feed hatred of anyone who thinks differently or who worships differently. I don’t get that.

I don’t get opera. I am a music lover. I had a music radio show for more than a decade devoted to an array of music styles that embraced country, jazz, bluegrass, contemporary, choral, hiphop and singer songwriters. I grew up and have an appreciation for the clever ditties of Gilbert and Sullivan, that whacky English form of comic opera from the Victorian era that was clearly the precursor for the rock operas of the 1970’s. But I just don’t opera. Even the well-known, well-worn pieces like Puccini’s Nessun Dorma which instantly have me comparing this version with the last version I heard, which clearly was not the intention of the composer. I just don’t get opera.

I don’t get rollmops. Those vinegary vegetables wrapped in pickled herring, huddled together in glass jars. Even more gobsmackingly out of my world of understanding is the fact they are eaten at breakfast time in some baltic countries.

Thank goodness my coffee has arrived and I can put a halt to that nasty salivating thing my mouth does before throwing up. There you go, my world of things I don’t get.