Much as I enjoy my time at my other job, the end of the summer inevitably finds me ready to vacate the retail space for most of the week. One day turns out to be the perfect amount of time to spend on a sales floor, being nice to irritable shoppers, and teaching my coworkers words like "vestibulary," "innocuous," and "superfluous". The bureaucracy bums me out. The capitalism bums me out. The bums bum me out. I'm also, increasingly, made to fe
el very old. I had the horrifying experience of discovering this week that many of my co-workers have never heard of Tori Amos. And the ones that have, don't know who Christian Slater is. Horror. When the hell did this happen?I find myself groping for common ground. Validation. An anchoring sense that the people in my small community share in some critical ways an orienting grasp on reality. For example, the conviction that Tori Amos, whether or not you like her, is important. A worse example, and you may want to brace yourself for this one, follows.
Approximately five years ago, when I was doing my year in the Shen'do Valley with my sister and her family, she decided to buy my nieces puppies for Christmas. She did some research, and finally decided to buy, at considerable expense (think in the thousands), two Newfoundland female puppies. She did the whole thing, signed papers and agreements, flew them in from wherever it is their breeder lives, bought those hideous cages for them, etc. I must admit to not liking them from the start. They're reputedly very gentle and good with other pets, but one of the first
things they did when they got big enough was tear apart the ducks that lived around the pond that was on the property. Also, they're water dogs, which means they have thick oily coats that smell like hell. They slobber. They roll in the mud and then lean on you. Eventually they got freaking huge, as they do. They're incredibly stupid. Untrainable, even. None of this is their fault. Our obsession with purity creates such critters. So, yes, I never liked them. I like small, clean, tidy dogs. Newfoundlands are the antithesis of this. I even have a story I liked to tell about how these dogs would lap tons of filthy water off the sidewalk and then come inside and throw it all up. All of this is not the point, though. The girls dug them. All was well.Several years pass. The last time I visited, the family had more or less relinquished the downstairs of their sizable farmhouse to the dogs. They slept there on the destroyed armchairs all night. The kids took care of them, but I never saw them walked or really played with. Here's where the story takes a sinister turn. I was on the phone with my mom yesterday, and she was filling me in on all the changes that my sister has made to her house recently. My sister does this kind of thing often, completely changing up her living space in almost unthinkable ways. My mom is going there for a week to watch the kids so the parents can take a romantic vacation in the Bahamas. Then my mom says, "Oh, yeah, well since they got rid of the dogs--" I said, "What do you mean, 'got rid of them'?" And she said, "Yeah, they weren't staying on the property anymore, so they put them down." (here's the dramatic pause in our conversation where I grasp for the edges of reality) She eventually hedged a bit, saying that she wasn't sure what had happened, but it sounded a lot more like...simply hedging. I asked her, seriously, whether she didn't think there was something weird/awful/crazy about this, and she responded in a sort of shocked way. She had no idea there was anything to be upset about. It simply hadn't occurred to her.
So, yeah, the rest of the conversation was...stilted. I was so shocked I wasn't sure what to say. I'm now desperately hoping that there is more to the story. That my sister actually gave them away. Or if she didn't, that they were... I don't know...sick or something. I had to tell Q and a few other people before I was able to reestablish my ethical mooring. I had to ask, like I asked my mom, "Isn't that messed up? Aren't you seriously disturbed by this?" I mean, you wouldn't think one would need validation. Nothing so alienating as family.
3 comments:
C and I were watching Curb Your Enthusiasm the other day and comedian Rcihard Lewis was telling Larry David how he goes through shrinks like water: "I have to retell my life story every time I get a new one. I say, I was born in Brooklyn, I felt alienated...." I think it's funny that a narrative of someone's life can be a) I was born and b) I was alienated: what else is there to be told? All this school stuff, having to explain the importance of a 15 years-long icon, and the dog horror story, just rathets it all up a couple of notches, eh?
The worst part about all this, besides the unnecessary dog death, is the fact that when you told me, I thought, "Oh yes, that makes sense that her sister would do that." I channeled your sis for a moment, and it CREEPED me out. I mean, imagine how much easier life would be if you could just kill and dispose of every living being that stood in your way.
I think we should start calling her Patty, as in Patty Hewes.
My sister collects pets and then gives them away every year. No wanton killing or destruction of the pets, at least that I'm aware of, but there is a cycle of, "Oh, this dog bores me. Let's get three completely different types of dogs instead and give away our current dog."
Also, growing up, my neighborhood friend Rory had two Newfoundlands. They mostly stayed in a large chain pen on the side of the house, and every time I walked near, they would leap up, extending a good six-plus feet in the air, against the fence and growl and bark and generally go apeshit. Needless to say, these dogs scared the ever-loving bejeesus out of me.
Post a Comment