Can I Have A Do-Over?

SOME DAYS START OUT BADLY. Little warning signs are dropped in your path that tell you, “Go back to bed. Stay there until tomorrow. Save yourself.” Yesterday morning was one of those days.

Let me explain.

I was awakened at about 6:30 AM by the baritone howling of the dog next door. Zeus is one of those dogs that begin to howl whenever they hear a siren. Zeus, like most dogs, has a sense of hearing thousands of time more acute than any human. This dog can hear sirens from Chicago. My wife, the lovely and sound sleeping, Dawn, I, and Zeus the Wonder Dog, live in Terre Haute, Indiana – a good three hour drive from Chicago. (Coincidentally, Terre Haute is French for, “That is one big honking dog”).

Zeus is a mixed breed animal. My guess is that he is part Great Dane, part Malamute, and part Ford Explorer. When Zeus hears a siren he revs up his engine and cuts loose with a deep throated howl that could serve as a backdrop Foley sound effect for “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

This morning, Zeus must have heard a siren from somewhere in the bi-state area, because he started howling for all he was worth. I woke up with a start, thinking I was trapped in a bad dream with Lon Chaney and Justin Bieber, with a little Britney Spears thrown in. It scared the human waste product out of me.

Bad Sign #1

He kept it up for several minutes. After I finished what he started for me, I dressed and went downstairs to make tea.

There was still some leftover tea in the pot so I went to pour it out. I hadn’t gone more than two steps when Bad Sign #2 jumped in front of me.

Two steps, tea pot in hand – and a fly decided to visit my tonsils. I inhaled and, all of a sudden I have this winged insect flying around my dental work.

I admit that, to a degree, I panicked. I didn’t see what had flown into my mouth. I just knew that something had. It felt like it was the size of a B-52 bomber, bouncing off my back teeth. Not only could I feel it, I could hear it. It sounded like a teeny, tiny concrete saw echoing inside my skull.

After the first few seconds of standing there, holding onto a teapot and opening my mouth like a hungry python sizing up a cow, I put down the glassware and reached my hand inside my mouth. If he hadn’t been cornered in such a restricted airspace I would never have been able to pluck him out of midair like I did. It was almost like a moment from the old TV show, “Kung-Fu.” The only thing missing were the chopsticks.

“Very good, Grasshopper.”

It was a fly – a small, ugly, germ-laden, filthy, scum sucking, typhoid, cholera, salmonella, dysentery, tuberculosis, and anthrax spreading piece of organic nastiness. And it was using my mouth to practice ‘touch and go’ landings.

Well, enough of that nonsense.

I had the little @%&#**# by the short hairs and I marched him into the W.C. and hurled it into the swirling waters of my namesake.

“Enjoy the ride, you little Son of a Maggot.”

You can see why I thought that my day was not going to be one of my best. First the Canine Arias from Zeus the Neighbor and then the airstrike from the Vincent Price/ Jeff Goldblum Impersonator. What was going to be next – another phone call from my friendly, yet phony, Canadian Pharmacy?

 

Post Script: Despite all of this early morning nonsense that day turned out to be a nice, productive, yet rainy, 24 hours. No more abrupt intrusions, inter-species intimidations, or even annoying breaches of the “no-call list” guarantees occurred.

Not a bad day after all. But, as Scarlett O’Hara once proclaimed,

“Tomorrow is another day.”

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