Dogs and Children

“…I’ve said this time and time again. Dogs are god’s most noble creatures.”

“Here we go again”, said Charlie.  “Dammit, I don’t want to hear this again.”  Charlie and Kermit were sitting, as per the usual, in their old lawn chairs.  They sat daily each summer in a front yard littered with large patches of dirt intermixed with sporadic tufts of dormant yellow grass and low growing weeds. All summer they sat. They mostly drank iced tea and made pointless observations about mostly anything. 

“I’m sorry, but it’s true. But I’ve also said a million times, that, be that though it may actually be, dogs aint children.

Charlie sighed.  He’d been on this conversations bend in the road a many times before.

“Mind you, I aint blamin’ no one if they so choose to treat their dogs as if they were children.  Hell, I’ve been partial to doing so myself. To each their own, I say. But dogs be dogs.  And that is a good thing.  Children.  Bah! Don’t get me started.”

“Why this sudden urge to revisit this sorry old god forsaken topic?”  The topic was old. Kermit, on average, brought up this same topic, repeated in the same general manner, about 1.57 times per month. Give or take.

“Oh, that dang Charlize girl down the street.  She wandered by the other day walking that poodle thing.  You know, the one that’s all dolled up as thought it were some kind of burlesque drag show queen.”

“You mean the girl or the dog?”

“What?”

“Who was dolled up? The girl or the dog?” In actuality, Charlie knew the answer.  He disagreed rather strongly that Charlize was a girl.  For one she was about their age and in her 60’s pushing 70.  For another, she was dressed garishly old fashioned.  A throw back to 70’s era senior citizen fashions of those times. Where she got those old garish garments was anyone’s guess.

“Well both. Charlize was wearing some gold lame’ outfit and had that thick thick blue eye shadow she is prone to clown her face up with.  And the dog, well that poor fella was fresh from the groomers and was all coifed up and what not looking like it was wearing them cheerleading pompons all over its body. Them Pompons with the pink highlights were a bouncin’ up and down as he was prancing johnny go lately down the sidewalk. Anyhows,” Kermit continued, “that don’t matter none. What matters is she started goin’ on and on about her dog being her little baby boy son.  Which he aint.  Neither is he a baby nor he a son.”

"Well, I agree that taint no young dog.” Charlie concurred.  “That dog he’s more of an old man dog at this point I reckon so. I mean, he’s healthy and all, but he’s a greying out. At least where there ain’t no pink dye bleeding it out. But why belabor the dog not being her son.  That dog means a hell of a lot to Charlize.”

“Cuz it’s wrong. That’s why. She didn’t birth no god damn dog. Where’s she, or anyone for that matter, go off and take credit for that feat, birthin a god damn dog, I dunno what.”

“Cuz, your making less sense as you keep using your words. I really don’t suppose she meant anything by it. I highly doubt she is implying that she gave literal birth to that dog of hers. I think she just must a meant she feels like a mother to that god damn dog.  That’s all I think she meant.” Charlie said.

“I suppose she did.” Kermit retorted, waving his hand dismissively at Charlie. “I said nothing elaborate. Mostly a ‘how’d you do. How’s lil Drake doing?’, that kind of stuff. But boy howdy, did go on a long talky talk about how her lil Drake was so very precious to her.  How she didn’t have kids, but was a doggy mommy and that was good enough.”

“Let me guess, you didn’t just leave it at that.”

“No way, dammit. I’ve had enough of all these fools denigrating dogs into children.”

“You tend to do that, not leave people be.” Charlie tried to steer the conversation out to sea.  He envisioned it drifting silently outward across the horizon, where some where well beyond it would forever sink into the plummeting depths of hell.

But Kermit, as he was prone to do, lured it right back towards them as though it were a great leviathan.

“Yeah, well, that may be, but dogs are special.  We don’t need to anthropomorphize them into little baby humans.  The human is a vile and wicked creature. A plague and blight on all that inhabits this god forsaken space clog. And dogs aint that. Not by a long shot.”

“Yeah, well we agree on that one.  But do you really need to go getting into arguments with everyone just trying to make small talk about it?

“Sure as hell.  Dogs need to be worshipped.  They are loyal, ask for little and are totally better than us in every way.  Think they caused us to swelter out here in this god damn heat burnin’ fossil fuels just so they can leave the door open tryin’ to air condition the damn yard.”

Kermit was prone leaning heavily into wild out of context anecdotal nonsense to sell his point.  In short, Kermit was prone to saying a lot of bullshit.

“And another thing, Kids, do wicked things that dogs would never do.  Dogs stay.  They don’t, one day, up and abandon you.  They don’t just up and go to Helsinki and never come back.  They don’t say ‘oh, lost track of time’ to excuse away not talking to you for a year.  Dogs stay dutifully right by your side asking for nothing but giving you everything.”

This was as close as they would ever get to actually talking about Kermit’s son, who left for Helsinki to take on work and be with a girlfriend- now wife- several years ago.  Charlie knew it stung Kermit, who adored his son.  His son had been his entire world after his wife left shortly after his birth. He hadn’t seen him since.

But he also knew Kermit. Kermit would never talk about his son directly.  He would only suffer to bring him up in this extreme round about manner. Charlie had once attempted to broach the topic rather directly, but boy howdy did Kermit become quite hostile. He flung a glass of tea out into the street where it broke into a thousand shards and then marched away. He avoided talking to Charlie the rest of that summer.  It was only the subsequent summer that Kermit returned to sit with Charlie and drink tea.  He acted as though nothing had ever occurred and Charlie let it be. He felt badly that Kermit was alone and didn’t want to further contribute to his misery by seeing him place himself into a forced exile again.

“Well, that is all interesting,” said Charlie,”My glass of tea is empty.  I’m going to go back inside and get me some more of that damn fine sweet tea that Sharla made for me.  Need a top off?

“That would be great.  Truly great.” Kermit replied as he leaned back in his seat and caught the smell of honeysuckle in the air.