Mars and Venus

They say that opposites attract. I don't know who they are, but I think they're onto something. I always thought Hubby and I had quite a bit in common. Not a lot of similar interests, but enough to get us to the alter and to produce two babies. Now, as we compare childhood stories and relate tales of "when I was little" to our kids, I see that I may have to muzzle him. Or tell him he has to create a new, fictional childhood. One that meshes with mine.
I had bunnies for pets one summer. There were three of us girls, so we got three bunnies. We named them Sugar, Spice, and Cinnamon. Hubby had a trapline. For bunnies. Bring on the spices!
I remember riding a pony at the neighbour's house one year, around the yard several times for a dollar. Hubby remembers going out with his dad and finding a frozen foal carcass, and dragging it out of the corral.
I grew up a vegetarian. The idea of eating a friendly cow was horrifying, and chickens were just grown up cute chickies, from the petting zoo at Easter. Hubby's family had their own poultry for awhile. Once, while butchering, the head of one chicken didn't quite get severed, and the chicken ran around the yard with it's head hanging off. THEN, the head bounced back on from all the moving around, and the damn thing looked around before dropping dead.
My family went to church Campmeeting for a week every summer. We stayed in a little white cabin, in a row of little white identical cabins, like all the other minister families. We had electricity, a pump close by, and my mother brought a 2 burner stove and a bar fridge with us. Hubby's family once lived in an orange camper/truck/van for a summer. Out in the middle of nowhere. Camping for them doesn't count unless the nearest shower and toilet is at least a 24 hour drive away.
My parents drove to the town dump at least one Sunday evening in the summer to watch the bears from the safety of the car. The in-laws have a bear rug on the floor. I've actually watched my Father in law run out the door in his sock feet, throwing firewood at a bear in the yard. Someone in the family has thrown ice cubes at a bear on the porch, but I can't remember who. Probably Sister in law, who also lured a bear onto the back porch by leaving food outside for it.
The closest I ever came as a child to being a "hunter/gatherer" sort was going to the U-pick for strawberries. Mom had a garden of vegetables, but I wasn't allowed in the fence. My husband's father has always hunted the meat for the family, going out in the bush for weeks at a time, and bringing home huge moose and caribou carcasses to hang to age. Then they butchered it on the kitchen counter, cutting and cleaning and packing it to freeze for the winter. I have a photo of me holding a caribou heart in my hands, the first winter I lived here and got to see that meat does not always come with a styrofoam tray.
I'm not sure how we are going to raise our kids, if they will be city dwellers or true "Yukoners", but I know that we will always have good stories of "when I was a kid, we had to....."