Get A Pet Rock

Last week my doorbell rang. Ugh! I hate it when people ring the doorbell, it is almost NEVER anyone I wish to see let alone talk to. This was no exception.

A young man who lives down the street was standing on my porch with a dog. The dog was an enormous Chow, obviously in heat and the young man was asking for a leash. Now this young man routinely comes to my house and asks for things, paper, pens, saws, brooms, leaf rakes, tools…you know anything he has spied in my garage and feels he has a use for. They never come back home.

I got an old leash and took it outside and sat down on the step to try to help him leash the dog. She promptly snarled, snapped and almost bit me. Her owner promptly threw her to the ground, put his knee in her throat and started threatening her. Young man is a minor or he would have suffered a similar fate, however, I used small words in all caps to emphasize the need for him to remove himself from that dog….NOW!

At this point, I noticed her collar. It was hard to see as it was buried beneath a heavy winter coat and the fact it was of a sufficient size for a dog ¼ of her size made it almost invisible. I immediately got a pair of scissors and instructed “young man” to remove that collar from that poor dog. It didn’t remove easily…the fact it was not embedded in her flesh is nothing short of a miracle to me.

Young man explained to me that his neighbor’s Rottweiler had “hooked up” (his words…not mine) with her along with several other random passing strangers and his dad had instructed him to “get rid of her”. When quizzed about exactly what that meant, he explained they needed to find someone to take her who would take care of her. YOU THINK?!

I’m quite sure that dog has never seen the inside of a vet clinic and has never had even minimum health maintenance performed and now there will be more of them. That being said, I understand not everyone is like me. Dogs eat better, have better health care and far more grooming maintenance than owners…………but……they didn’t take ME in….I took them, therefore they are MY responsibility. They are also my heart.

Young man……get a pet rock. You aren’t deserving of a living creature, even one that bites.

This is a stick-up, I mean a pop-up, no it’s a pop tart…..art.

OR.............Take me to your toaster!!!
Where can a person move to where people still have a teensy bit of common sense?  Please….anywhere?  Somewhere a 7 year old doesn’t get suspended from school for nibbling his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun?  Anyone?

Let’s totally ignore the fact he was trying to nibble a mountain and it just wasn’t working out.  But when he looked at it, he decided it looked like a gun……”kinda”.  According to the kid his teacher was pretty mad and he thought he was in BIG trouble.

Can we seriously get a grip people?  Do we think at some point this kid is going to hi-jack an airliner, demand 1 billion Hershey bars and insist on being flown to Willy Wonka Land?  It’s a pop tart for crying out loud.  Of course we need to not study on that fact too long or someone will have his parents up on charges for not sending him to school with a carrot and a tub of tofu.

According to news reports, children have been suspended for lobbing imaginary grenades into the playground sandbox or threatening to shoot someone with the bubbles from their Hello Kitty bubble gun.

For most of my childhood I always had a gun on hand – my right hand usually.  I worked hard to perfect my shooting sound (the boys were always so much better at it than I was) which was probably why I always had to be the outlaws “woman” instead of an outlaw.

I begged for months for a B B gun because the boys next door had them and I wanted to ride my bike (horse) and shoot at dirt clods and telephone poles.  Sadly, I never got one, having a mother who was not THAT evolved.

In high school every pickup in the parking lot sported a gun rack and every gun rack – a gun.  And yet, here I sit at the ripe old age of 63 telling you no one ever dreamed of shooting up the school.  Maybe part of this was due to the fact we didn’t sit at home and play video games all day, we played cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, and Army OUTSIDE until it was too dark to play out there any more.

Geeeez Louise, this whole thing really gets my knickers in a knot.  I thought I had it bad when my son’s 4th grade teacher called me to ask me to beat him senseless when he got home because he spit in his beans at lunch.  I was pretty undone over this, I’m supposed to punish him 3 1/2 hours AFTER the crime?  Lady, jerk his young Asterisk up off that lunchroom chair and give him a good old fashioned butt beating!

All I can say is it is a good thing the kid didn’t nibble the image of Jesus in his poptart or he’d be headed to Kinderprison right now.   **Facepalm**