Ok…despite all the completely off-my-rocker talk about the dog’s three distinct voices yep, still sounds pretty wackadoodle with a capital WACK if I do saysomyself I am mentally stable. To prove it, here’s what I REALLY wanted to say about my dog: He’s actually an intelligent, brown-eyed ape. Wrapped in dog fur. With the heart of a lily-livered chicken. Totally sane-sounding, right?
But enough about me. Back to the lily-livered chicken. If I’m getting a jar of pickles out of the fridge? That’s the dog’s cue to creep under the kitchen table.
Making some toast?? He slowly creeps backwards into the family room like a dog in an afterschool special who’s trying to avoid the kidnappers as they plot in the kitchen.
If I’m heading for the pantry?!? (Where we keep all the machines that go “whir” and are therefore the most fearsome things on the planet.) RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!
And because I’m the Meanest Mom Dog in the world? Sometimes I come shooting out of the pantry making whirring noises. Mwa-ha-ha!!! But the joke’s on me. Because that nonsense causes the dog to pee his pants. Hardy har har indeed.
The dog remains absolutely silent during these tribulations. Not a ruff or woof to be had. Because the dog only barks for exactly one reason: if there’s a fox in the backyard. Or so I thought. Until the other morning. Duhn-duhn-duhnnnnn!
The other morning, the dog was barking like a full-blown freakshow at something off-screen. Initially I assumed it was a fox…but then the dog continued to bark long after a fox would have jumped the fence and run off. This ongoing barking naturally meant that Billy Bob Thornton, under the guise of Karl Childers, had crept into our backyard and was lurking around the side of the garage, nattering on about how some folks call it a Kaiser blade…some folks call it a sling blade…I call it a Kaiser blade. Uh-HUH!
So I – wearing the saggy, snow-flake-patterned longjohns I call pajamas – went out to see if I could offer him some biscuits and mustard. The rest of the family, playing the oddly incongruent role of “those meddling kids” from the Mystery Machine, trailed out behind me.
What I want to mention here is that the whole gang was fully clothed. But were stacked up behind ME who was wearing my unmentionables. So I was confused about why I was leading the charge into the face of death. Now admittedly, Karl Childers isn’t necessarily the face-of-death. Some might consider him more of a hero, really. Unless that someone has dun somthin’ wrawng, thayt is. And I dun plenty wrawng – see Meanest Mom Dog above. But more importantly, why wasn’t anyone who was wearing REAL clothes leading this charge?!
Hero. Murderer. No matter WHAT was around that corner, if he was wielding ANY PART of a lawn mower, my plan was to outrun Rooby, Rooby Roo’s sorry a$$. But the way everyone was underfoot had me concerned that I’d trip over someone despite my best “run faster than the slowest person there” plan. In which case, I hoped that Fred or Velma (I’M Daphne, ya dope!) would have enough sense to change me into a cute outfit; something way less…droopy…before they called the paramedics to tend the cut in my body parts. And fix my hair a lil’ bit.
So with this in mind, I round the corner of the garage and…
THERE HE IS!!! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!! And he has the CRAZIEST grin on his face!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!! RUNNNNN! RUFF! RUFFFFFF!!!! WOOFWOOFWOOFWOOF!!!!
Oh.
Wait.
It’s just one of those yellow, smiley-faced helium balloons caught on the fence by the garage. Billy-Bobbing up and down and lookin’ purty happy with hisself while scaring the PEE out of me.
No cause for alarm, folks-who-call-it-slingblades. Whoopsie. Tee-hee-hee. [insert embarrassed laughter here] Don’t I feel foolish?!? And was that ME barking?? Weird. But now I know how the dog feels. Geesh, that was HORRIBLE. AND I gotta go change my jammi pants. Into something less…wet. Yep, hardy har har indeed.