God's Kaleidoscope of Children

This weekend I was invited to two different and completely contrasting events, the first was a hard rock concert--Linkin Park, and the other was to a hunting dog field trial competition.  I attended these two events within 12 hours of each other and I could not help but notice the extreme dissimilarities of personalities that attended one event versus the other event.  I then introduced my family to yet another segment of society when we chose to have dinner at a family diner--Sills Cafe.  To say the least, all of these parties were at the far extremes of society, albeit at opposite poles.  The following are a few examples of the flora variety at these gatherings:

The Linkin Park crowd:
First, I must admit, I love going to concerts because I love to see the plethora of freaks who come out of the woodwork.  The aberrations of society spontaneously throng together like an orgy of rats on a piece of discarded velveta cheese.
There was the guy with a 6 inch mohawk and scottish kilt, various stages of past-their-prime girls in tube tops with more rolls & curves (back flaps) hanging out the back of their tops than they have to show off out their fronts!  Then there was the myriad of awkward-anti-social-acne covered (or pocked) teenagers who were proudly sporting their latest hard rock shirt acquisition, or the massive 'Bad A--' wearing a stocking cap which read "Parental Advisory is Advised" who was just looking for a fight.

Next we have the guy who shows up wearing only a tee shirt in the middle of winter with bed-head hair already looking wasted, but yet gets up six or seven times throughout the show, each time returning with yet another gigantic plastic cup of beer (yeah, the streets will be safe with this guy driving home).  There were the head bangers or stoners, or wannabes, or my favorite-- the huge lady with supreme inner confidence wearing an all white, body hugging tank top who jostled her enormous hips while doing the leg slap with her left hand and with her right hand raised over her bobbing head, she does the hand flap to the beat.  But even after all the variety of these we were left to find (and who happened to be sitting next to me) the oddity in the rough, the most out of place personality of them all-- the 'stoic oriental couple' sitting quietly with their hands folded in their laps showing no expression or emotion throughout the entire concert.  All in all, I have to say, I far more enjoyed observing the people at the concert than the concert itself!

Hunting Dog Field Trials crowd:
Unlike at the Linkin Park concert, nobody there wore black.  In fact, I gathered that there was an unwritten dress code that to participate in this event, you must wear some form of 'mud-marsh' or 'tree-swamp' print camouflage with or without the optional glowing orange hat.  I even saw a man wearing camouflaged chaps--I thought to myself, really?!  Has dressing to blend into a muddy quagmire while riding your motorcycle or galloping on a horse helped in any way to save your life or kill that elusive mallard?

Nobody present was clean shaven and the vast majority wore straggly unkempt beards or mustaches.  All sported all-weather boots, some lined with fleece, others made of rubber anticipating the potential need to track through mud or shallow waters.  Those who didn't wear orange hats, wore ball caps or those hats which had ear flaps that drop down to keep your ears warm.  Of those who wore glasses, invariably they had transition lens that were always at a not clear, but not sunglass translucency.  There was one though who I stayed clear of, who kept trying to talk to my nine year old son about getting a gun to shoot birds.  He was the type of guy who puts your inner alarms at high alert.  While a different breed of people, for the most part they were all very friendly and happy to be free in the outdoors with their dogs passing their time killing defenseless ducks at close range with a shotgun for sport.

The Sills Regulars:
Later this same day, I took my family out for breakfast-dinner at Sills Cafe in Layton and once again found myself amongst yet another totally different breed of people.  First off, what is it about diners that says, "No teeth required"?!  Next to us we had a table of veterans who still proudly wore a ball cap which posts their unit number and the navel ship they sailed decades ago.  Unfortunately there wasn't a clean mouth among them.  At another table, we saw a man whose white spindly beard was so long that he literally tucked it into his pants!  We also saw an enormous bowl of a man sporting blue polyester pants with his belt hiked up just below the nipple line (A unique customer who actually could eat an entire 3 stack of Sills gargantuan pancakes--each a foot and a half wide and combined thickness of over two inches!).

Up at the counter there was the loner/drifter 'truck-driver' type eating probably his millionth steak and eggs dinner.  We were served of course by the diet coke addicted waitress who we couldn't decide, "Is she pregnant or does she just not carry her weight well"?--either way we probably should give her a good tip!  Then there was the cashier, who was beyond obviously pregnant because she looked as if she could blow at any moment.  Finally, we had the cooks in the back covered with tattoos, who appeared to not care less about grooming standards or verbal constraints, as they openly spewed the details of their latest conquests for all to hear.

I am left to wonder, is this vast array of personalities an indication of God's creativity or of His sense of humor?