Cool, Calm & Contentious - Merrill Markoe [20]
“If you’re going to start calling me names, then this discussion is over,” I said as I was going through the big display case in my front room, throwing out my snow globes to make space for his ceramic Napoleons. Then I stalked out and never bothered to talk to myself about this again.
Back to my flight over that Google Earth map of my life.
Now when I’m airborne and gliding above those worrisome corpse-strewn trenches of Verdun that gape like surface wounds after an asteroid collision, I quickly head due west, then north, where I come to a recent addition: an improved recreation area full of rolling hills, a manicured picnic area, and a lake surrounded by flowering trees. It seems to make the rest of the map look more balanced, less haunted and disturbing—visual proof that there is a payoff for having had a checkered past. How nice to see that at some point, you find that you’ve gotten better at checkers.
So where edicts are concerned: never again.
Why I Love Dogs
I LOVE DAVID ATTENBOROUGH DOCUMENTARIES. I WATCH THEM over and over. Every three-toed sloth hanging on the underside of a tree branch and every grimacing hyena that walks in slow motion across a grassy plain fills me with empathy and awe. I immediately begin to yearn for quality time with blue-footed boobies, proboscis monkeys, and frill-necked lizards. I want to be close to them, to help them forage for potato bugs, or dung beetles, or whatever it is they have in mind for dinner. That is because the idea of living with a member of another species has always seemed enlightening as well as thrilling.
No wonder I fell in love with dogs from the moment I met any of them and found out how willing they were to share my home.
From my earliest experiences, dogs have not really been pets to me so much as exceedingly cooperative exchange students from another planet. In our unlikely union, mystified though we are by each other’s habits and customs, I continue to be impressed by how they are willing to meet me halfway. In most cases, not only are they eager to cooperate, they are fine with doing it on my terms at the location and time of day of my choosing! (Well, maybe not with the things they find patently insane. For example: waiting until sunrise for meals.)
I got my first dog when I was in kindergarten and instantly found his presence to be comforting and entertaining. After a long day of dealing with teachers and parents who seemed impossible to please, what a relief it was to join, in progress, a species who honestly felt at any given moment, that “this is the best moment of my life … Until right now, which is slightly better … Wait, I meant this … No, this … No, I spoke too soon. This moment right now is the best one ever.”
And if we hit a lull or a snag, all that was required to set everything back to perfect again was a cookie, a simple item whose massive importance has no real equivalent in the restless, fickle world of the human.
But along with the ability to value life’s simple things, if I’m being completely honest, I would also have to admit that dogs err on the side of being a teensy bit self-absorbed. Though I must add that of the fifteen dogs with whom I have shared my home since childhood, not a single one has ever let me down—providing I adjusted my expectations so that they were in line with what the dogs had in mind to deliver anyway. Thus it’s also hard not to conclude that in some ways dogs may be the biggest narcissists of all.
After many years of therapy, I can’t really tolerate human narcissists anymore. I don’t care about their tragic self-doubts or the roots of their pain and rage. Yet oddly enough, I still love being around dogs. When I try to analyze why, it’s definitely hard to figure. It certainly isn’t because of the behaviors they exhibit around me, which, taken at face value, are pretty disturbing.
For instance, if even the most adorable man or beloved family member insisted