JAK (Part 1)

When I was in the 8th grade, I had a crush on three different girls at the same time.  These polyamorous leanings probably weren't that unusual given that in the average 13-year-old's body, there's a raging maelstrom of hormones swirling around and anyone who smiles at you or even lets their gaze linger for a few moments is crush-worthy. 

To be fair, the first girl I had a crush on, Jody Rupert (as usual, names are disguised just enough to avoid lawsuits), I had crushed on since the beginning of 7th grade.  That was the year that the new students from Lancaster Elementary were incorporated into Salamonie Elementary and Middle School, where I had attended since the first grade.  Jody sat behind me in science class, and I turned around to talk to her one day early in the school year and it was love at first sight.  She didn't really say anything, but she had the most beautiful green eyes that I had ever seen.  Or maybe they were "hazel," since I have a difficult time discerning between green eyes and hazel eyes sometimes--especially when twenty-eight long years have intervened and tampered with the memories.

Jody had blonde hair and slightly vulpine features--high cheek bones, a bit of a pointed nose--and a delicate, albeit non-feminine, frame.  Her hair swayed back and forth--almost bounced--when she walked.  She was kind and friendly...though she was annoyed with me almost immediately.  I know that she was kind, though, because she tolerated me turning around and talking with her every day after I finished my in-class work.  Plus, she was pretty smart, too, which really appealed to me, especially when coupled with everything else.  However, she was quiet and not nearly as voluptuous as I tend to prefer, but she was still pretty and kind and didn't shank me in the middle of frog dissection, so all those things were a bonus in my mid-pubescent mind.

The second girl I had a crush on was Angie Submachinegun, whom I fell for one day in algebra class.  She was also a Lancaster transfer, but my lecherous thoughts did not begin until the middle of the 8th grade.  I was sitting in the back of the room one day, which happened to be right after we had gym class, and for whatever reason, Angie Submachinegun decided to wear a thin, white t-shirt after we had finished with gym.  Again, for reasons that escape my memory, she went to sit down in her seat which was one seat ahead of me and to the right.  When she went to sit down, she was turned 180 degrees from how she would normally sit, resting her right knee on the seat and gripping the back of the chair with her hands.  This caused her arms to push her breasts together in a manner most magnificent; when coupled with her thin, white t-shirt, this really put her sub-machine guns on display.  It was instant lust from there on out.

Angie had light brown hair that was curly.  She had big, blue eyes, rounded cheeks, and the kind of mouth that always seems to smile.  Despite it being only the 8th grade, she had an hour-glass frame.  She was short, too, so all that feminity was really packed into a nice, neat little package.  She, too, was friendly and nice.  She was a little more outgoing and bubbly and friendly than Jody.  Unlike Jody, I don't think Angie has or had any idea that I crushed on her so. 

The last girl I crushed on was Kim Firebolt.  She was kind of a blend of both Jody and Angie.  She had wavy dark blonde hair, green eyes, and her mouth always looked like it was smiling because I think her mouth always WAS smiling.  She was taller than Angie, shorter than Joy, and though her breasts weren't nearly as large as Angie's, they were still finely shaped.  She was very athletic, and so she had a great ass to go with the rest of the package.

The thing about Kim was that she was very, very extroverted.  She went beyond friendly and bubbly.  She was loud.  She loved to laugh and she had a great sense of humor--maybe not as dark and twisted as mine, but it was still a good one.  She was fun.  Kim did have a couple of drawbacks, however.  One, her older brother was one of my good friends; he's one of the few friends of mine that have had hot sisters.  The other drawback was that the Firebolt family were big Purdue fans.  Big. 

Unlike Jody, I never asked Kim or Angie out or to go with me or whatever the fuck stupid dating ritual middle school kids did in the Great Lakes region of the Midwest.  Shuck each other's cobs?  I don't know.  I'm sorry that last joke was so corny.

Of course now, almost thirty years removed from those halcyon days of middle school awkwardness, I could never see myself with any of these girls.  I've grown as an adult and changed and--

Oh, who am I kidding?  Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I broke my own rules and did Facebook searches for all of them.  Jody is stunningly gorgeous and Kim still has awesome boobs and is still smiling.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find Angie, but I found ten thousand women with the same name, many of whom I wanted to see naked. 

However, the important thing is that these three were the last crushes I had in middle school; despite never letting Kim nor Angie know and despite countless rejections from Jody, they were the three that I focused on the most as I made that transition from the awkward days of middle school into the really awkward days of high school.  In addition, these three young women introduced me to a part of my psyche that I would eventually embrace fully as I grew older...albeit, somewhat unintentionally.

That Was Close...

One nice thing about Facebook is that it allows a person to appease that stalker facet of their personality that they bury deep down under their good looks, witty repartee and debonair charm. *smiles rakishly, light glinting off my pearly-white teeth*

I've spoken often in the past of my unrequited high school yearning for one miss Betsy Hagar. I've also mentioned that I found her once on Facebook, but decided not to repursue our friendship, because I preferred to keep the fantasy that she hasn't changed a bit from high school (except maybe her boobs got bigger, thanks to having children...I'm a simply--if roguishly appealing--creature).

And, well, my fears might not be completely unfounded.

Betsy is apparently the exception to the rule. Last night, I decided to go through and cyberstalk check up on several of my ex-girlfriends, various crushes, and other ladies that I had been interested in or who were interested in me throughout my Cassanova-esque career.

Unlike the wall I've erected around my personally-skewed memories of Betsy, I've actually become friends with various ex-girlfriends, mostly from high school, including She of the Unkempt Pubes. I haven't asked--nor do I want to know--if a razor has Lewis-and-Clark-ed it's way down below, or if "Here There Be Dragons" should simply be written below her waist.

Notice how I said only high school ex-girlfriends. For the college ladies--as I mentioned to someone else--I tended to go for the nucular option when burning those bridges. It's amazing what a little maturity can do for breaking up...

Anyway, I went delving through the profiles of several ladies from my past--from the few I remembered from elementary school all the way through those last few moments before meeting and falling for my wife.

Look at me, trying to save face.

My most common thought: "Whew...dodged that bullet."

What I found before me was a panoply of candidates, all ripe for being featured on People of Walmart. Several of their profile pictures resembled screen shots taken from an episode of Cops. One of them I mistook for a dude--a dude with very large man-boobs, but a dude nonetheless.

This is not to say that all of them looked like they had succumbed to meth addictions, but, wow. My tastes in high school must have been turned to "trashy" more often than not. Either that or Huntington, Indiana is not the land of milk-and-honey that it's advertised as being. I know, shocker (without the dirty pinky).

As I pondered what life would have been like with some of these women, I suddenly saw the episode of the Simpsons where Lisa and Milhouse were married and living in a trailer, Lisa lying in a mumu suspended above a garbage-and-rat-strewn floor in a hammock. I shudder now even to recall the vision, no matter how amusing it might be.

There were a few former flames that I could not find. For instance, the girl I was with before I met my wife? Her last name is "Adams". Do you know how many fucking "Adams" there are? Not to mention, she shares a first name with an actress AND a photographer (and a physicist at Vanderbilt), which only serves to complicate the stalking search.

And though the Sword of Damocles threatens from above, I can safely say I wouldn't trade the woman I somehow secured to share my bed with any of my past crushes. Well...except for the girl I nearly threw up on. She turned out to be pretty fucking hot.

But not as hot as my wife. *shifty-eyed* Love ya, baby!

Memoir Monday: Tequila

I know some of you have seen this picture several times before. I've used it on forums boards for my avatar, I've used it on social sites, I've even thrown it around just for shits and giggles.

This picture was taken in grad school, during my first semester, before I had entered a lab to do my research, and before I had even met my wife. In those halcyon days before my life was dominated by "research" and "reaction mechanisms" and "14 hour days" and "chemistry 24 hours a day" and "fevered dreams of cyclopropanes and benzene rings", and even before an angry God or panoply of angered deities saddled me with a powerful allergy to hops, I was able to drink.

And, boy, did I.

However, in all that time, I hadn't really "experimented" with alcohol. I knew what was out there, and I knew what I liked (and that vodka did not like me). I knew the slow burn of scotch as it crawled down my gullet, I knew the fiery burn of Jameson, and the slow warming of bourbon.

And before you go all smartass on me, I know that they're all types of whisk(e)y.

I like whisk(e)y. Which is why it was my sipping liquor of choice.

Rum, however, was my "get drunk and hit on my undergrad students" liquor of choice.

I had, however, managed to avoid the creature known as "tequila". I knew of tequila, but had never imbibed. Mostly because my friend, the guy who woke me up shaking the bed when we roomed together in college, got drunk off tequila once. I remember it distinctly.

*ring*ring* went my telephone.

Whoever could this be? I thought, idly picking up the phone.

"Lock up yer daughters and sisters and wives, lubbers, 'cause Captain Rummy is coming ashore!" drunkenly drawled screamed a crude imitation of a pirate's brogue into my ear.

"[name redacted], is that you?" I asked, innocent as a schoolboy.

"There is no [name redacted]; there is only Captain Rummy, and he's comin' ashore, lubber!"

And then the phone disconnected.

"[name redacted]? [name redacted], are you still there?" I asked into the phone.

The response I got was the front door to the dorm (I lived one room away from it) flying open and smashing against the brick facade of the building.

"Captain Rummy, has boarded yer vessel!" I heard, bellowed in the hall. "Avast ye, and say yer prayers!" And, still holding the phone to my ear, I looked out in the hallway as my former room mate went tearing down the hall, screaming about how Captain Rummy was here, and he was there was rapin' and pillagin' to be done. Curious, I stepped out into the hallway for a better look, and all I saw was the north end of a south-bound former room mate. I saw him go around the corner, at full tilt, and I heard the back door of the dorm fly open, bang, and then slowly shut.


And silence.

This, my friends, was the result of tequila. Or so it was revealed to me later. And, if tequila could lambaste a hardened drunk like my former room mate in such a manner, then it was not something I wanted to mess around with.

"Try it," insisted my Bulgarian friend, while I was hanging out in his apartment on campus at Notre Dame. "It's a very good drink, baby. I'm sure you'll like it." He offered me the shot glass filled with the clear, slightly green beverage.

"Just make sure Captain Rummy doesn't go looking for some rapin' and pillagin'," I said. And then I took the shot.

Holy wow. It burnt, it cleared my sinuses, but damn, I didn't feel even slightly drunk--you know, that feeling like you just threw down a bunch of alcohol? Yeah, I didn't have that sensation at all.

"Would you like a margarita, baby?" my Bulgarian friend asked.

"Set me up, baby," I said. So he did.

And he did again.

And then again.

Let me take a moment here to pause and encourage you that, if you ever get the chance to drink a margarita made by a Bulgarian, go for it. They like to put a lot of alcohol into their drinks.

So it was with these margaritas. Aside from the shot, I think I had three, maybe four margaritas, with at least one more shot thrown in, to boot. Tequila and I were getting along famously. I was snuggling down in her bosom and getting comfortable. It was so warm and muzzy in there, and her breasts were so pillowy soft and full of alcohol.

Unfortunately, while I was getting sleepy, I was also getting hungry.

Fortunately, Dr. Assy had a bucket of cheeseballs sitting in the living room (he shared an apartment with my Bulgarian friend), so I grabbed the bucket, tore the lid off, slid my hand in to feast myself. After the initial couple of handfuls, I slipped my hand back in there, and then I succumbed to the warm, pillowy bosom of tequila.

My friends, who love me oh so much, decided it was picture time. And, honestly, I can't blame them. Plus, I'll always have this lasting memento of the night I first encountered tequila.

Well, to go along with the cirrhosis, that is.


Memoir Monday is a wholly-owned subsidiary of I Like to Fish... and as such is the brainchild of Travis. I would have used the bookish button that he normally furnishes to go along with Memoir Monday, but as he claims that today he will be showcasing a new button to the blogging world, I'm just writing up this somewhat parodical disclaimer with inclusive links so that he won't sue me. The stories therein cannot be rebroadcast, retransmitted, or announced without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball."

Pruny Fingers Do Not Fond Memories Make

So, this is the week in which Americans, living up to our cultural stereotypes, begin to prepare for days of celebrating the largesse of our agricultural endeavors in a manner most gluttonous: by eating until we want to puke, laying on a couch, putting a hand in our pants Al Bundy style, and falling asleep in front of a football game.

As much as I like to eat, you'd think that Thanksgiving would be one of my favorite holidays. This is not so. I don't hate Thanksgiving, but it's about my fifth favorite holiday, ranking behind Easter but above Memorial Day.

I realize this is about as Unamerican as you can get. Since I'm a simple creature (boobs, bacon, good!), the reason I dislike the holiday is pretty simple, as well. I fucking hate doing dishes.

Now, I'm sure I'm not the only one who did this growing up, but we would pull a multi-meal Thanksgiving. It wasn't just the Thursday that my family worked their way toward the third ring of Hell, but we took in the entire weekend to celebrate the harvest. Thanksgiving wasn't just a day to celebrate the goodness that God or whatever the hell deity was tied in with Samhain in my house. No, it was a motherfucking experience. An extravaganza of culinary delights, if you will.

On Thursday, we'd go to my grandmother's house. This would be my paternal grandmother. Now, my father suffered mightily from middle-child syndrome, and as such he was the consummate dutiful child. Since I was his oldest son, this meant that, by some sick and twisted application of the associative property, I was the dutiful grandson. Never mind that I wasn't the oldest--though I certainly was the wisest and handsomest--I was still the one roped into standing there with my father washing up the dishes from our holiday repast. *shudder* I've seen things done with gravy that are unfit to discuss in polite company.

It wasn't just the rinsing and drying and stacking and putting away of dishes that got to me. No, since my father needed to impress, I was also elected to help scrub the kitchen down. If it wasn't clean and dry enough, my father was whipped up into a Drill Sergeant-like furor. The towel would crack against my ass and I'd be back down on the floor, hands-and-knees aching, using the toothbrush to scrub up every last drop of wayward gravy.

Where was my mother during all this? In the other end of the house, discussing how awful the dinner was with my aunt. My uncle was passed out in a recliner, football flickering on the television. My cousins and brother were in the back of the house, playing board games (one thing grandma definitely had was an abundance of board games to entertain us). So, it was just me and dad, working KP.

Friday would roll around, which meant that we would have our second Thanksgiving meal, at home. After my maternal grandmother had died, we invited my grandfather to come eat with us, which he was all too happy to do. Usually, somehow, my aunt and uncle would also show up. Again, we'd sup and fill our guts full to bursting. And, after everyone was finished eating, while they were sitting around the table, still licking the sauces from their fingers and smacking their lips in fully congratulatory style, celebrating that they were, in fact, better than the potatoes and dressing that they had just devoured, my father would begin gathering up the dishes. Since I was the oldest child, I got drafted into helping. *sigh*

My mother and my aunt would retire to the living room, where they would sit and talk about how great the dinner was. My grandfather would join them. My uncle would pass out in a recliner, football on the television, another hapless victim of tryptophan's vicious soporific effects. My brother and cousin were off playing video games.

This left me and my father to do the dishes. Our kitchen was tiny, and so we had no dishwasher. And, after all, we were gracious hosts. Make some coffee, pour some wine, and clean these dishes up. While everyone else celebrated and enjoyed themselves, I stood in the kitchen, a damp towel over my shoulder, my fingers slowly absorbing the scalding hot water which I used to rinse the soapy dishes. I'd stack them in the drying rack until it was full, and then I'd wipe them off and put them away. My father still scraping and scrubbing the dishes clean in the sink to my right, I would look out the window and wonder just what part of the holiday was supposed to be happy.

You better damned well believe that, when my wife and I were looking for places to live, we found one with a dishwasher. That way I could load it up after the dinner was finished and go pass out in front of the television while football flickered at me, fully reveling in the over-indulgence of the day. More importantly, my fingers weren't all pruned up. Now, that's a happy holiday in my book.

Fluffy and the Rabbit

Damn, guys. I didn't mean to make everyone cry over my dead dog. Look, if it makes it any easier, she was an old dog. It was her time to go. She was well past the point where you could teach her new tricks. Plus, I'll admit it: she had picked up that old dog smell. You know what I'm talking about. The one where you pet her and then the smell of dog permeates your palms and sticks with you wherever you go. You can be driving back to school and be like "When did I leave molding, rotten socks under the heater?" and then you realize that the smell isn't gym socks gone wild, but rather it's the stink of the dog you patted on your way out the door still clinging tenaciously to your flesh. Yeah, that's what she had adopted. Nice dog. But she stunk.

Better? All those tears dried up? No? Fine.

Let me tell you about my cat. Everyone loves a little pussy story.

Oh, and by the way. I believe it was Adrienzgirl who said she liked me because I'm a dog person. Well, sorry, but I'm not. Don't get me wrong. I like dogs. I love dogs. In fact, here, let me give you another stupid dog story.

I was walking out to my car a few months back in the early spring when I heard some sort of jangling sound off my port side. I looked up and saw a fat beagle waddling toward me in that stupid way that only hounds can pull off and yet they still look adorable. Being that I've been around dogs all my life (well, most of it, anyway), I knew to offer my hand to Stupid Dog so that he could see I'm not a threat. The only problem is, when dogs sniff my hand to see if I'm friendly or not, they don't smell "good guy, might have spare sausage, should make him friend," they in fact smell "sucker". That's what Stupid Dog did. He sniffed my hand and immediately rolled over onto his back to show me his belly. Dawwwwwww! How can you deny this? So, I reach down and pet him. And he's a fantastic, fat beagle and he's all like "Look at me, I'm a fantastic, fat beagle. Don't you love me? Don't you want to shower me with sausages?" And I got done petting him and I said, "Well, Stupid Dog, it's time for me to go. I've got an appointment to keep." And Stupid Dog looked up at me with eyes that said "Where's the fucking sausages?" And I looked back at him and saw his tag. So, I looked at the tag. It was from someone in my neighborhood.

Since they were on the way, I loaded Stupid Dog into my car and I drove his fat, worthless ass home. Because I'm a sucker like that. To top it off, I rolled down the fucking window so that he could hang his head out of it and sniff the breeze. Most likely in search of sausages. Finally, I took him home, but instead of just dumping him out, I carried his fat ass to the door, rang the bell, and returned Stupid Dog to his rightful owners. He was so happy to be home, and his family was happy to have him back. He gave me one last look that said, "Thanks, but next time, don't forget the sausages."

See, I'm a sucker.

The thing is, I like cats, too. As much as I love the dopey companionship of a dog, I love the fuck-you-I'll-slit-your-fucking-throat attitude of cats. I like it when they stare at me from the windowsill, visually giving me the finger. I like the way that they climb up onto the bed and get in your face and purr loudly and say "The sun is up, Asshole, and you are, too! I'm going to sleep all day today, but you sure as fuck aren't going to sleep in on my watch. Now, up and at 'em. And open a can of tuna, Ebeneezer. I deserve a treat."

Yep. I sure do like cats.

Anyway, my first cat was Katy. My mom, um, liberated her from her hair dresser as a kitten. Her hair dresser had about ten thousand kittens running around the farm, and she just sort of shoved one of them into her purse on the way back to the car, figuring that Lisa would never miss one out of ten thousand cats, right? Turns out, Lisa didn't. And so I had my first true pet. I named her for a character in a book I had checked out from the library that very same day! Clearly, fate and the gods were telling me that I was going to be the proud owner of a cat. For about a week.

The dog from up the street killed her while we were away one weekend at the Lake. I came home to find her little body there in the driveway where she had been mauled. Fucking asshole dog.

My second cat I found in an old shed out behind the house of an old lady who lived two houses behind me. She was a black-and-white long-haired cat. I loved her immediately. I named her Fluffy. Because she was. She was really fluffy. Her hair was so long and so thick and so unruly that, in the winter when her coat got thicker, she would get these massive hairballs around her neck from where she would turn her head and such that I couldn't brush out--no matter how hard I tried--so that we had to wait until the spring when she started shedding for them to fall off. The only problem was, they would be so massive and they'd lay there in the grass and get all wet with dew and rain that you'd be walking along and think that you had just happened upon an aborted kitten. I'd always sort of shriek and step back and then realize "Oh, it's just one of Fluffy's hairballs". And then I'd throw it away.

Fluffy lived a pretty luxurious life. For about six months. And then the dog up the street mauled her. Fucking asshole dog. Except, this time, he didn't kill my cat. He just broke her leg. And, well, my parents, being the kind-hearted souls that they are, decided to shell out the money to have her leg fixed. Hooray! A happy ending. For once.

Fluffy was a pretty good cat, too. She was an accomplished hunter. Only problem is, she'd bring me her trophies. I can't remember the number of times I would be out in the driveway, shooting free throws, and here would come Fluffy with some dead bundle of something-or-other in her mouth, a big dumb grin on her face, and then she would lay it at my feet. The free throw stripe in the driveway became some sort of sick and twisted trophy room for the cat, or a mausoleum for various rodents, birds and lagomorphs from the yard. It all depends on your point of view.

Not knowing what to do, I'd pet her, tell her what a good kitty she was, and then I'd scoot the dead little thing over out of my way and continue on practicing. She'd finally take the morsel and go sit on top of my dad's car and eat it. "That goddamned cat's on my car again!" he'd scream as he came running out the back door, shooing her off.

I loved that cat.

She apparently had a taste for rabbit. One spring while I was in high school, a rabbit was hanging out in our side yard. My mom would watch it frolic and play in the early evening light. Then, one day, while she was sitting on the front porch, doing her duty and diligently watching the neighbors, she saw Fluffy coming through the yard, dragging something huge. Turns out, it was the rabbit. But, the rabbit was SO big, she had a hard time moving the body. Plus, she had only mortally wounded it and was apparently looking for me to show me the kill. I went out there and she was like "Look at me. I'm so proud of myself." And the rabbit said "I'm not dead yet." Okay, sorry. Tasteless, I know. So, I yelled for my dad, because I knew she would need help getting the rabbit up onto his car, so I figured he could help her.

"Oh no," my dad said, and then he did the unthinkable: He took the rabbit away from her.

Oh fuck, was she pissed. Have you ever seen a cat stomp off mad in a huff? She actually managed to do it. She stomped around the yard for a good thirty minutes, meowing loudly. And not a pretty meow. She meowed in that pissed off way. And it was constant. And, apparently, she could hold a grudge because, after she initially quieted down, she would sound off again whenever someone turned on a light inside the house. She was not happy and she was going to let everyone know about it.

Evidently, this was the final straw (the first straw being the arrival of Meg, whom she detested, because Meg thought that cats were subservient, and in case you haven't noticed, cats serve no masters). I could almost hear her little voice, amidst all the meowing that night, saying, "I bust my ass to bring you all the finest dead small animals that I can find in the yard, lay them at your feet, and then when I rid the yard of the evil leporine menace, and this is how you thank me? With a yappy little...dog...and by taking away the prize I worked so hard to ambush and kill. Well, fuck you very much. I'm going to go find an old lady to live with."

And so she did. She moved out. Took her ball and went home. Er...to a different home. She went and lived with an old woman up the hill. Every so often, she would show up on the front sidewalk. She'd look in, see that we still had the dog, and then mosey on her way with a sassy flick of the tail and the best feline cold shoulder she could offer.

So, there you have it. I'm not a dog person. I'm not a cat person. I love both dogs and cats. I'm like a paradox wrapped up in an enigma with an outer coating of contradiction and punctuated with a question mark.

And yet, despite all that, I still smell like a sucker.

Nut-Meg

I'm not really here today, True Believers. I'm spending the day in a small room with twenty-four other people as we hold our quarterly meeting with our client. They are feeding me, but let's not forget what Milton Friedman held near and dear: There's no such thing as a free lunch. So, I probably won't be getting around to your blogs today. I'd apologize, but I'll be too busy spending the evening massaging my poor, sore buttocks. The chairs in the main conference room ain't so comfy, if you know what I'm saying. And if you don't, well, they make my ass hurt.

In lieu of telling you more about my backside, I thought maybe I'd tell you about my dog.

When I was in the fifth grade, we adopted a shelter puppy. She was pure mutt, a mixture of Yorkshire and Scottish terriers. From the moment my mom picked her up out of the kennel at the animal shelter, she loved our family. My mom named her Megan. She named her litter mate Mandy and my aunt adopted her.

While Meg was a pure, loving dog from the moment she came home, she also eight pounds of crazy stuffed into a two pound sack. She was a good kind of crazy, though, except when it came to not being on a leash or a chain. Then she'd go batshit and run as far and as fast as she could, not caring about me huffing after her. We always found her. Except for that one time. However, when we woke up the next morning, she was in the garage--wet, muddy, exhausted...and still batshit crazy. We were glad to see her and pissed that she took off, all at the same time.

It was this batshit crazy streak that led us to call her Nutmeg from time to time.

Obviously, she loved to run, and she was fast. I'll give her that. Her true talent, however, was in her leaping ability. Whenever someone came home, she would dance on her back legs and paw at you with her front. However, whenever someone from the extended family--my aunt, my cousins, my grandfather--came to visit, Meg would leap out of her skin. She'd jump shoulder height because she'd be so excited to see you. This amused my grandfather to no end. "Leapinist damned dog I've ever seen," he'd chuckle.

Like any true dog, she was a good companion. Whenever I would come home from college, she'd be there to greet me. She'd always climb up onto my lap when I'd sit down and hunker up next to me in bed when I'd finally crawl in it at night. I'm not sure, though, if it was true canine love, or if she just wanted a nice warm ass to snuggle up against at night. See, my mom and dad had a waterbed while I was young, and my mom would yell at Meg when she would get up on the bed and walk around while my mother was trying to nap. So, Meg became adept at scooting herself around to get up right next to you, to maximize the amount of warmth she'd siphon off your body.

One night, I came home from grad school for no particular reason other than I needed to escape South Bend for a few hours. I was having one of those tough nights where I was struggling to get over the Ex-, and booze and porn just weren't cutting it. This was a long drive through the night with the windows down and a mix tape of emotionally dark music from the 90s kind of night. Around two am, I found myself on familiar roads and, with fatigue setting in, I made a couple of turns and I was soon creeping down the tree-line avenue that my parents' house rested on. I still had a key to the house, so I crept inside as quiet as possible and decided I'd sleep on the spare bed downstairs.

Meg was there to greet me, her tail wagging more slowly than usual, her old bones creaking as she followed me to the pallet. I took off my shoes and helped her up onto the bed, fearing that she was too old to make the jump. I pulled a blanket up over myself, curled up, and felt Meg take her usual position right behind my legs and under my ass. She hated it when you farted on her--again, much to my grandfather's amusement--and yet this was her preferred sleeping position for the night.

As much as she hated you breaking wind on her, she loathed water. She hated bath time, she hated to be left in the rain, and she hated being squirted with the hose, which was her usual punishment for crapping on the floor. Outside and squirted with the hose. When I was in high school, we got a pool, and Meg wouldn't go near it. Except, she liked to sleep on the deck beside the pool in the sun. Unfortunately, this is where she met her end.

I don't remember how old she was when she died. She was about thirteen or fourteen, but like I mentioned, she was slower, didn't jump so well. She had grown a bit surly in her older days. She didn't like kids nearly as much as she had when she was younger. When we brought my daughter down to her grandparents house, Meg pissed on the floor where her jumper was and Cookie's socks became soaked in dog piss. I wasn't exactly happy, but I also wasn't going to beat the dog nor squirt her with the hose. I thought of it as a canine equivalent of an old man bitching about you playing on his lawn.

Anyway, my mom threw the dog outside because she was going nuts over squirrels in the yard--her hatred of squirrels in the yard was only surpassed by her hatred of cats in the yard. So, Meg went up onto the deck to sleep in the full midday sun. However, when my mom went to get her later, the dog wouldn't come, and she couldn't be seen. My mom feared the worst. My dad came home that night and looked around the pool area for her, and couldn't find her. They figured she had run off, but feared the worst...

Since it was early summer, the thermal cover was on the pool, obscuring the water. I won't drag it out, but Meg probably climbed up onto the deck, had a heart attack, and fell into the pool. It was, without a doubt, the most ignominious way in which my dog could shuffle off this mortal coil. My mom, ever the lady, made my dad go out and pull back the solar cover, and there she floated upon her watery grave. My dad rescued her and buried her out behind the garage, in the same area where my first cat Katy was returning to that dust of which she was originally formed.

The other day, when I was having a particularly rough afternoon, I laid down to take a nap when my wife came home from work. As I pulled the afghan up over myself, I began to drift off to sleep and, for the first time in years, I had a sort of waking dream about nutty old Meg. I dreamed that she was there, beside the couch, looking up at me with her liquid brown eyes, waiting for me to fold my legs up so that she could take up her position under my ass. It was kind of odd, but in a happy sort of way. I patted my hip once--the sign to welcome her up with me--and then fell into that blissful couch sleep that I coveted so much.

Oh, and I never swam in that pool ever again.