by Sally Cohen and Len Lear

There are two different kinds of people in this world. There are those who profess to love “mankind” but can’t seem to stand very many individuals, and there are those who disdain or even loathe “mankind’ but have loving relationships with individuals.

There are people who love going to weddings and those who regard it as cruel and unusual punishment.

There are those who set the table for breakfast the night before and those who set the table as they are actually eating breakfast.

There are people who fasten their seat belts as soon as they get into the driver's seat and those who wait until they endanger everyone else's lives by struggling into their belts with one hand while steering with the other.

There are people who regularly use cents-off coupons in the supermarket and those who never use them.

There are people who are depressed if their home team loses the big game and those who could not care less.

There are those who laugh like crazy at jokes with raunchy four-letter words and those who find such jokes disgusting.

There are those who write postcards on the first day of their vacation and those who write them on the last day.

There are people who smile when having their pictures taken in a passport photo office (and come out looking like lunatics) and those who prefer a serious expression.

There are those who will gladly choose a new and interesting-sounding dish on a menu, and those who, afraid of anything unfamiliar, will persuade someone else at the table to choose it so that they can have a taste.

There are people who carry photographs of their family with them and show them to strangers, and there are people traveling to get away from their families.

There are people who would never live in the city, viewing the suburbs like a frontiersman discovering the Louisiana territory, and there are sensible people who would never move to the suburbs.

There are people who feel no shame talking on their cell phones while driving, on trains and buses, in restaurants, etc., and those who would rather drive nails into their head than talk on the cell phone while driving or in a public place.

There are parents who would give their children every single thing they ask for and parents who believe their children should work for what they want.

There are men who, if asked by the police to describe what their wife was wearing that morning, would be able to specify every garment, and those who could not even remember the color of her eyes.

There are people who always feel sorry for street musicians and put something into their hat, and there are those who look into the hat and think, “Damn, I wish I was making that sort of money.”

There are people who rush to be the first ones out the door after a live show is over, and there are those who keep on applauding until the theater employees come around to clean up.

There are those people who react to a breakage by thinking “I have to fix that” and those who think “I have to get a new one.”

There are homeowners who would like to kill every wild creature who eats so much as a blade of grass or flower in their back yard, and there are those who do not mind providing food for the wild creatures.

There are those who are miserably obsessed with the idea that they might have bad breath but actually do not have it, and there are those who have no idea that they might have bad breath, and do have it.

There are people who leave a spare house key outside under the mat (in the flower pot, behind the drainpipe, under the garden gnome, etc.), and there are those who have been burgled already.

There are some who, when a watch starts going wrong, learn to adjust quite adequately by adding five minutes to the time shown or subtracting eight and a half minutes per day, etc., and there are others who just go and get the thing repaired.

There are those who watch television programs they have recorded on the DVR but don't keep them, and those who keep them but don't watch them.

There are people who can take out staples with their fingernails and those who can't.

There are some who can remove splinters from their own bodies without thinking and some who have to get an ambulance or half a dozen relatives to do it for them; the same goes for removing bits of grit from the eye.

There are those who, when they get to the bottom of a page in a magazine which reads “Continued on page 138,” turn to page 138 to continue reading, and those who simply turn to some other article.

There are people who would never take the time to read a frivolous article like this one, and there are the other people whom we love.