Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Monsters to the Left of Me


There’s something about turning left that throws me off balance. Joan thinks it’s funny. Shane just gets exasperated. But, I tell you, it’s a real condition.

We walk down the driveway—that is, Joan and Shane walk down the driveway while I hang back until I’m sure nothing is amiss—and we step outside the gate into the street. If we walked straight, we’d land smack in the middle of the poison ivy that’s busy winding itself around the little wilderness of trees. It’s very shiny and really rather beautiful, but it’s not the sort of thing you want to roll in—at least that’s what Joan says. So, we have a choice—make a right or make a left.

I’ve had a problem turning left for about five years now. It comes and goes. I’ll go through weeks or months when making a left is no big deal; then, boom, out of nowhere, a left turn becomes a scary prospect, a vaporous gray monstrosity, a cunning slip of a shadow that paralyzes me with that loud mocking laughter that no one notices but me.

What’s a dog to do?

A dog turns right.

And, don’t bother reading anything political into this little problem of mine, for I’m just a dog. Sure, I write a blog, but that doesn’t make me political.

You might think my problem is sort of silly, but some humans have strange foibles, too. Maybe they don’t have left/right dilemmas, but some of them are afraid to walk down the street without a cell phone stuck to their ear; others set fire to little sticks of tobacco and suck on them; lots of them drive really fast just to prove that they can; some of them even kill each other for having thoughts different from their thoughts. But, I guess you can’t compare a dog to a human, you know, because humans are so much smarter.

So far, nothing bad has ever come from my right turns. It’s all good. Now that I think about it, nothing bad ever happened during a left turn either. So, I guess it’s all in my head, as they say. But, things in your head are always harder to deal with than things in the real world. Isn’t that true?

Best wishes, Juno

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