A different story

What do I say to you now? My days have taken a turn at Sottosopra Street, and whereas I might have been working with a GPS system before, I now have an old faulty compass and the stars.

I was driving down Main Street yesterday in my mini-van when I got the strange urge to remove my foot from the gas pedal and sit Indian-style like a kindergartener waiting to be read a story. I wanted to be driven, not driving. Luckily for me, "Dani California" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers came on the radio simultaneously, which alternately gave me the urge to floor it.

Ms. Hutcherson, my kindergarten teacher, who taught me how to sit "Indian-style" and who incidentally "talked like she had a mouth full of cotton" according to my mother, never knew about the Red Hot Chili Peppers. If she had, she probably would have warned us against them. My grandparents recently found my kindergarten graduation certificate along with my report card. It said that I "ended the year at the top of my kindergarten class." "How did I manage that?" I wondered. "And did I not start the year that way? At least I was able to recover."

I remember them dividing and conquering us, taking us to a little cinder block room painted yellow and asking us to count as high as we could. I was in such a hurry to show that I could count all the way to a hundred that I skipped from 98 to 100, leaving out 99. She wrote down on her clipboard that I could only count to 98, and I was as resentful as a five-year old could be.

I also remember an emotionally-broken little boy who would cry and scream every time kindergarten would get too stressful. At my birthday party that I had in the classroom, he burst into a random fit, and I can still remember the crocodile tears that flowed down his cheeks. I wanted to apologize to him for the grape Kool-aid I brought. Maybe he wanted cherry? I still wonder where he is today.

I also wonder if Ms. Hutcherson is still living. If I ever saw her on the street, I'd probably ask her if I could take her out for coffee and count to a hundred.

***

Shortly after I arrived home yesterday, my son left the back gate open. I saw both dogs streak out of the back yard happily as fast as they could. My calls to them went unheeded. Half-way up the street, the lab turned around to look at me piteously for a moment, thought about coming back, but decided against it. A few minutes later, the lab came back limping, a limp from which, even a day later, he hasn't recovered.

The pit bull, however, is a different story. She was free, and she took complete advantage of her leave of me. I walked the mountains of my neighborhood, calling her name. I followed the din of barking dogs, reasoning that they were raising the alarm about the stray cur with the bright orange collar that was now traversing through their territories. I was afraid for them, for they had no idea of what she was capable. I once took her to a doggy-daycare facility, and when I returned to pick her up, she was by herself in a cubicle they deemed "time-out." When I inquired why she'd been separated from the others, they handed me her "doggy-report card." It stated, "Drew doesn't start fights with the other dogs, but once she feels threatened, she refuses to back off." She wasn't allowed back. That's my girl.

I was just glad to be out after dark, as I'm sure she was. I returned home empty-leashed, but as I walked up to the house, I heard the clinking of her collar-tags in the woods nearby. I'd never caught her, as with most things, by chasing. I walked to the edge of the tree-line, and I sat down on the blanket of Georgia pine needles, Indian-style. She sidled up beside me and put her head submissively into the leash. We understand each other, she and I. We are both, I told her, a different story.