Pet Peeve

I never had a pet as a child.  Okay, there was Pretty Boy, a parakeet, but I never thought he counted.  Don't get me wrong, I liked him, but you can't take a parakeet for a walk, and they won't lick your face, and they won't eat the food your mom says to eat every bite of, that you slip to them under the table.  (Parakeets aren't under the table.) 

I had a turtle once.  I'm not sure where I got him.  I was pretty excited about him (her?) at first.  Finally, when the teacher assigned the annual story "Me and My Pet" I'd have something to write about.  My turtle didn't live long.  I didn't have much of a story. 

Years later, when George and I started dating, we went to the Kentucky State Fair.  George was impressive as he threw the hoops over the coke bottles.  So impressive he won not one, but two goldfish.  (I looked longingly at the girls who carried the humongous stuffed animals down the midway.)  Still, I proudly clutched my plastic bag of precious cargo through the Tilt-O-Whirl, Bubble Bounce, and Ferris Wheel rides.  No one told us you had to treat the water before you placed your fish into their new habitat.  In a very few minutes, my fish, Bozo and Screlda, were floating belly-up in their bowl.  These were not trick fish, they were dead.

A few years later, after the fish incident, George and I were married.  (He continued to impress me in so many ways, I couldn't resist.)  One day he came home from work with a French poodle puppy in his pocket.  (How's that for alliteration?)  We named him Chico.  There's a story behind that, but I'll save it for another post.  Chico was great.  I had a pet.  He hiked his leg on my Norfolk pine.  Chico was gone.

As you can see, I was never good with pets.  I had hoped that I might overcome this weakness.  Surely, for Jamie, our only child, I could rise up and meet the challenge.  But no, though we tried gerbils (Tammy and Christina, God rest their souls), and two cats, it just wasn't meant to be.  I imagined Jamie would harbor ill feelings toward me the rest of his life (Though I bought him the $100 Nike tennis shoes he had to have in 3rd grade.  What was I thinking?!)  I was pretty sure there would be a dog somewhere in his future.  I wrote the following poem with all this in mind.