It all started out with a sobbing girl: she was fat, she was
crying, she was under my balcony, and she was up early in the morning. Every Saturday,
I would wake up to the sobs of this small girl, and every Saturday, I would
contemplate yelling at the beast of a girl. Apparently, a sane person would
have assumed that the child was being beaten and needed to get assistance from
CPS. I, on the other hand, assumed she was hungry, due to her girth.
After a month went by, and the sobbing girl continued to
sob, I decided one day that I would go and give her a granola bar, because
granola bars make me happy, so maybe it would make her happy. I waited for a
week with a granola bar on the ready for her to come by for a good wail, and
when she finally did come, I was wrought with anticipation. So much so that I
ran out to the balcony, yelled, “Hey little girl!” and then threw the granola
bar right at her head. Now that I think back on my actions, I realize that I
probably should’ve been a little less excited to throw down a granola bar to a
strange child, but I choose to not dwell on the past.
The little girl stared up at me with her big, puffy, eyes;
looked down at the granola bar that nearly hit her, with a serene glance; and
then started bawling harder than she had ever bawled before. She sprinted away
from my balcony and I never saw her again outside of my apartment; although,
for a few weeks, I did see her peeking through her blinds into my apartment,
where I was nowhere decent enough for a small child to look upon. Soon after,
the little girl moved, and a new, childless tenant moved in, much to my relief.
Unfortunately for me, he was an owner of a very spirited Pekingese.
The Pekingese went unnoticed until the owner started to put
her out on the patio while he went of his morning workout. This usually lasts
from about five to ten in the morning, which is plenty of time for a dog to
become bored. So by five thirty, the dog is in a full, howling rage. The first incident
in which the dog decided to howl all through the morning, I had barely slept
the night before, and so going off of four hours of sleep, I decided to go out
to the balcony and start screaming, “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! NOBODY LOVES YOU! YOU
CAME FROM A PUPPY MILL!” These words do
not soothe any dog, especially not a Pekingese, and so the howling increased for
the next couple of hours.
After two mornings of the howling, I was ready to roast the
pup on a spit, ready to leave its carcass on the neighbor’s welcome mat. The
most disturbing of my thoughts led me to kill the dog, skin it, and then
fashion a bonnet out of its fur, where the head would rest lazily upon my
forehead. Now that I look back, I realize that I was nowhere in my right mind
and probably should have seeked out professional help.
Upon the third morning, I had lost all common sense, and
when the dog started to bark at five, I decided to go out to my balcony, take a
shoe that was missing its pair, and toss it at the dog to get it to finally shut
up. My intentions were not to kill or injure the dog, mind you, but mostly to
scare it, which I did accomplish. When the shoe hit the patio wall, the dog
retreated back into its kennel and stayed there for a time. The only problem
was that when the shoe hit the patio wall, there was an explosion of red, metallic
wrappers that littered the back area of my apartment, and my neighbor’s patio.
Apparently, after losing the pair to this shoe, I had
decided to stash away the wrappers of Dove chocolates that I had eaten during a
fasting Sunday, and to hide the evidence from my roommates, I decided to
squirrel them away within a shoe until I could throw them away without being
shamed for not fasting. Unfortunately, I never got around to throwing the
wrappers away, and now they were all within eating distance of the dog. And if
eating tin foil didn’t kill this dog, the residue from the chocolate would
have. So I sprinted out to the back of my apartment, in my sweats and a sweater
that has become a midriff due to washing, trying to hide the evidence.
After getting my shoe and most of the wrappers, I noticed
one gleaming, red, wrapper was left. And of course it was right at arm’s reach
on the neighbor’s porch. But when I leaned
over to grab it, the Pekingese finally had a reason to bark, and it came after
me like I was about to rob the place, which I’m sure it looked like I was going
to rob the place. I needed to get a distraction for the dog before it would eat
the tin foil, so I ran back to my apartment for some lunch meat.
I don’t know why I didn’t remember that I used the last of
the lunch meat the previous night for my upcoming lunchbox, but I was out of
lunch meat. So I made a sacrifice. I disassembled my sandwich, removed my lunch
meat, sprinted to the backyard, and threw the MiracleWhip coated cold cuts to
the far end of the patio: the dog ate, I got the wrapper, and my mission was
done.
