It’s a Monday night. I am walking, well walk-pulling, our easily distractable Shih tzu along a path. Our walks involve a few optimistic steps. Then there’s a hunt through grass and a satisfying pee (sometimes the dog pees too). After that, the dog will play along with this whole ‘sure, you own me’ thing and walk. But after a while, the small animal starts adding up the context clues and deduces that I’m probably not the one in charge. Surely, the fact that I follow her around, pick up her poop, and feed her blueberries can only logically add up to one conclusion.
When this conclusion is reached, the doggy decides it would rather not go on and lies in the dirt. Whether or not this is a power move is answered moments later when no amount of tugging or of picking up and placing on feet will result in anything more than the dog slipping back onto her rump and watching me try to explain with facial expressions to passersby with well-trained dogs that that I am in charge.
When everyone’s gone, I take out a blueberry from my blueberry pocket. (Nota bene: I now have a blueberry pocket in most cardigans, as has been realized by my fascinated and somewhat disturbed students. I also have a poop bag pocket too. Usually unfulfilled). When the dog decides this mishigas is over, she emits a high-pitched offkey song reminiscent of Donald Sutherland’s terrifying scream at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s then that I give in and pick her up for the final leg of our walk. And a reckoning begins.
Like many boys growing up in the 1980s, I took a lot of misguided life lessons from movies. From TV I learned that learning is half the battle (GI-Joe!), I learned that nobody put Baby in the corner, and I learned that action heroes had very little sense of humor. Action movies were the ones I wanted, as My Dinner with Andre was still out of reach for my fledgling gray matter. Action heroes didn’t smile. Why, who had time to smile when they were about to go fight the Russians or a terrorist cell at the local mall. Those men would be easily identifiable by the keffiyehs they were donning.
These action heroes also had a dog. If not overly large, then sturdy, and either dark brown or black. This dog could do math and save people from avalanches. This dog was loyal to the hero, he knew who the bad guys were, and he could take a shot if need be. He also looked really cool walking alongside the hero in the woods after his successful mission when he has some time to get back to nature and solitude.
The movie antithesis of the rugged character with a rugged dog was a comic character with a comic dog. He was a harmless neighbor, an accountant, maybe, or a lawyer, some brand of overly-officious nerd who was there to present a bureaucratic issue for the hero to swat away as he has bigger fish to fry, and what could a defaulted loan mean to a man who just killed ten terrorists hiding in his yard? This guy in the 1980s movies wore light clothing – pink golf shirts, white shorts, white shoes. Perish the thought. And my 1980s-movie education told me that these officious-type guys had lapdogs and those lapdogs were meant to be an appendage of their urbanity and unmanliness.
You’ll be happy to know that the movies of the 1980s don’t rule supreme in my life view anymore. For example, my dreams of fighting bad guys with Arnie got sidelined when I realized just how great it was to read on my couch and not get shot. But would it be so bad to be the officious next-door neighbor? That officious guy was rather admirable when I think about it. At a time when boys were being told what boys should be, in that little fictional world, dressed in white and carrying around a poodle, he was being true to himself. It’s almost heroic.
Heroics are part of the last leg of our walk journey. I have put the dog back down and she has agreed to walk for a little while. She is only a foot or so off the ground and can sleep sixteen hours a day, but even she has the killer instincts at times. I recognize the look of the hunt. So, I let her chase me. I run away and she comes after my ankles and growls and chews the bottom of my pantleg. Then I chase her back and she runs away, quickly dashing between my reaching hands. She would be able to avoid any 1980s-movie terrorist. Then I run away and let her catch me. I eventually surrender. I let her know she has won, she gloats and allows me to live another day.
We finish the walk feeling content, ready for inside. She’s tired, she’ll recline on her little bed and I’ll sit on the couch and we’ll watch TV. I’ll probably treat her to some blueberries or maybe even a piškoty. We’ll relax this evening mindfully safe in the comfort that the officious man’s house brings, not a terrorist nor a bureaucrat in sight.
