It Takes All Kinds

I was covering a meeting the other day when my cell phone vibrated, alerting me that I had a new text message.

I glanced at my phone to see who the message was from. Since the sender was my 19-year-old daughter, I opened the message to make sure there was no emergency.

The message was titled "Me and Wilbur." I clicked on it, and up popped a photo of my smiling daughter ... holding up the fetal pig she had just dissected in her biology lab.

Yech!

She does things like that because she knows I'm ooky about blood and guts. She is not ... which is why she is going to college to become a nurse.

I wonder sometimes how people end up doing the things they do for a living.

Take nursing, for example. Being that blood and vomit are two things I can't deal with at all (thank goodness I've always had people to help me when I was subjected to those things courtesy of my children and pets), I could never be a nurse. I could never have any job in the medical field.

But some people can, and they end up being medical professionals.

I am not a salesperson. I'm not aggressive, and when people tell me no, I leave it at that. If I had to sell anything for a living, I'd starve.

But some people have that charisma. They could sell ice to Eskimos, as my dad would have said. They are able to provide for their families because they have the talent necessary to sell things.

I can't manage money. I can't balance a checkbook. I can't budget.

This is why I could never be an accountant (and you sure wouldn't want me to be yours). Yet, there are people who love numbers. These people end up in the financial field -- doing other people's taxes, managing their retirement plans or helping them invest their money.

I am a terrible driver. I have no attention span, and I tend to zone out if I have to drive any distance by myself. I have no sense of direction, and before the advent of Yahoo! Maps, I spent a lot of time hopelessly lost.

So of course, I could never be a truck driver. My loads would never get where they were supposed to be, and systems of all kinds would break down all over the place.

But there are people who love the call of the open road. These people become truck drivers, and are an integral part of keeping commerce in this country flowing smoothly.

At my church, we talk a lot about people's gifts ... the things they can do well and use to help others. We all have them; sometimes we just have talents that we have to get creative with in order to utilize them for the greater good.

I have friends who do all kinds of different things ... Some are college professors, some are artists, some are nurses, some are realtors, some are social workers, some are stay-at-home moms or dads. Everyone has a place in this world.

We're all a part of something very large and very grand, and what a wondrous thing it is that we're all so different.

It really does take all kinds to keep the world turning, doesn't it?