We are our dogs our dogs are we

As a kid I always expected at some point I'd grow up and figure my shit out.
Well, quelle surprise, I haven't.
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I don't feel that much wiser than I did in my 20's. I still drink too much sometimes, say stupid stuff, piss off the people I care about, worry too much about what strangers think, I watch crappy TV instead of reading something important, I say yes when I mean no and no when I mean maybe and maybe when I mean probably. Sometimes I don't know what I mean or even want to mean. Has the shit has gotten more complicated? Did I give up and not realize it?
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On a completely unrelated note (perhaps not completely), I went to one of my favorite coffee shops the other day and this woman and her dog were inside taking up all the room (it's tiny, basically an espresso counter, a cash register, one table, two chairs, and about six feet of floor space). I left my pooch outside and squeezed inside. Then had to go back outside because the woman immediately declared that her dog would be surprised by my dog when they exited, as though my dog were crouched just around the corner, hee-hee'ing and just waiting to jump out and startle her dog. (For the record, at this moment my dog was staring blankly at something in the street.) So I went outside and petted my dog and waited while the woman crab-walked out of the coffee shop, a death grip on her dog's collar. Her dog did not seem surprised at all by my dog. When she was safely across the street, I went back into the coffee shop.
I am so over people and their dogs, I said, to the barista, who moments ago had been yukking it up with the woman.
She nodded. She's making that dog crazy. It bit my little boy last week.