Frog-kissin'

Well, I am just a little miss posty pants today, making up for the time I missed last week and the beginning of this week, I guess.
Belle of the Blog has a wonderful post today (link) about loving the unlovable. I think this also applies to people who don't appeal to you aesthetically, personality-wise, or any other -wise.
Jumping to conclusions about the love-ability or like-ability of a person based exclusively on how they look means you just might be missing out on knowing a really neat person. I've met a few people that I didn't like at first meeting. Sometimes that was based on looks, sometimes on attitude, sometimes on personality. But, if I took the time to get past that first impression and really pay attention to what the person was like (and get to know them), most of the time, I ended up liking them. I also realized that if I hadn't taken the time to get to know them, I would have missed knowing someone who could add insights I might not otherwise have had, and I would have missed knowing someone who could add, even vicariously, to my world of experiences.
That has taught me to look past the exterior of a person, and value what they really are, deep inside, over looks. I've known people who were considered ugly (not conventionally good-looking), but I thought they were just gorgeous/handsome people and they really appealed to me because they were good, kind, humorous people with a unique way of looking at the world.
And really, how many people do you personally know that have absolutely nothing worthwhile in them at all? Even my mother, who I dislike intensely and wants nothing to do with me, has her good points (I think, I wouldn't know for sure since I haven't talked to her in 9 or 10 years). I guess one of them would be that she loves my Dad (she must, they've been married for 55 years). I love her (after all, she is my mother), but that doesn't mean I have to like her as a person or that I have to deal with her on a daily basis (the fact that I'm in Minnesota and she's in Illinois helps a great deal with that). And I'll tell you what, anyone who can deal with my mother and walk away whole, can deal with anything. Dealing with her for most of my life has helped me realize that people are far from perfect, and we are all products of everything that has happened to us in our lives. Those things are not excuses for us to be asshats (ie...my mother was a bitch to me so I can be a bitch to everyone else, I was abused as a kid so I can go out and abuse others or kill and maim, etc, etc, etc). Those things are opportunities to learn and grow as people, and know that, since it happened to me, it could have happened to others, and maybe I should cut them some slack. It's funny, but people who know me and my mother have told me quite often that they don't know how I turned out as well as I did with the kind of mother I had. I just tell them that I did it to spite her (best revenge is living well when someone expects you to be miserable all your life).
So, go kiss a frog today, you never know what you'll find.