When we first got my dog, my brother and I were terrified of her. There is no mistaking now that she is anything but vicious, her paws aching with arthritis and sores, and she spends most of her time lying in her dog bed and being picked on my the bigger, younger dogs of the house. She's just a small, plump, old pug, but when she was a puppy, she had boundless energy.
She would chase us up the stairs of the condo, leaping with her little legs over the gaps in the stairs. That was something else we were afraid of: those gaps. We thought we'd fall through and die, that Gidget would slip through and her teeny legs would snap in two. Because we were children, these were just the kinds of things that we spent our time worrying about. It wasn't as though we knew any better. We thought that was all there was to fear; nothing scarier than that played a role in our lives.
We feared puppy bites at our ankles instead of starving to death, something that our own relatives had dealt with. We feared unrealistic plunges into the basement, but we didn't think about being kidnapped, because we were optimistic and young.
Eventually, that real fear grew into a game of fear, a joke because how could we have been afraid of something so small and harmless? We started pretending to be afraid of her, but it wasn't real anymore. We would dangle our feet between the gaps in the stairs, pretending that it made us brave when we knew that it didn't. And my puppy grew older and fatter with time, two surgeries, and a broken leg. We looked back at her and thought of how silly we were to be worried about her jaws when there was so much more out there to be afraid of.
I think you really capture the mind of a child and how intense even small things seem. It is funny to imagine children running away terrified from a pug (I mean it isn't funny funny, but it kind of is.) If you get the chance I think a good place to expand would be on what you are afraid of now.
ReplyDeleteI really love this. I've never had a dog but I you've made me look at it from a new perspective. Most people tend to write or talk about their upbeat, fun new puppies and I love the fact that that's not the focus here. I agree with Camielle. I would like to see this piece go further as to bridge your fears as a child to your fears as an adult (or almost-adult) as you enter into the "real world."
ReplyDeleteHmm. What's your artistic relationship to mystery? In the third paragraph you allude to things that most readers will be desperate to know more about. Some part of you wants to tell (part of) this story, it seems. Maybe some part doesn't.
ReplyDeleteWhat's going on?
DW