Highly Social and Intelligent

In seventh grade my communications teacher gave a speech informing us no matter how hard we tried to prevent it we would inevitably become our same sex parent, the girls would end up like their mothers and boys as their fathers. This has always stuck a chord with me--more so to prove Mrs. C wrong. This is not because I don't adore my mother, we are simply very different people. Several years later I am here to report I have not yet totally began embodying her ways. In spite of this I have adopted her obsession with pigs.

I have refused to eat them, read multiple books about them, had two as pets, purchased a pig shirt, visited them at the farm, pulled my car over to cry when a truck full of pigs passed me on the highway, dissected fetal pigs, and the list continues.
On vacation a few years ago my brother proclaimed, "this family will stop anywhere for pigs!" Although a jokester at heart, this time C.D. was stating a fact about our parents (mom in particular). She's not as amused by the cute little pigs on the farm; instead she prefers the ones that are stuffed and dressed up like chefs, the ornament kind of pigs, or pigs flying on weather vanes. Another major difference being, her desire to stop at the grocery for the slaughtered pig dinner fixins.

Our shared passion for pigs compliments our personalities quite well. I'm frustrated by the factory farming of this animal so near and dear to my heart, loved the 'real deal' in learning how to raise pigs, and couldn't help the researcher side of me when the opportunity to experience the pig from the inside out presented itself. Mom is more of an aesthetics person, having an emotional attachment to the beauty behind pig decor. The pig entertains her passion for cooking. While I would rather gnaw on raw vegetables she has an appreciation for taste, savoring the multiple ways a pig can be prepared.

"I never met a pig I didn't like. All pigs are intelligent, emotional, and sensitive souls. They all love company. They all crave contact and comfort. Pigs have a delightful sense of mischief; most of them seem to enjoy a good joke and appreciate music. And that is something you would certainly never suspect from your relationship with a pork chop." (Sy Montgomery A Good Good Pig)