Pet History, pt. 1

Amanda recently asked for the skinny on how Mollie came to be our dog. Well, for those of you who care (and even those who don't), here goes:

I've always wanted a dog. My best friend growing up, Stan, got a small Australian Shepherd when we were 12 years old. I happened to be with his family the day they went to the pet store to pick him out, and ended up spending the next couple of days and nights at Stan's house (it was summer). Consequently, the dog imprinted me as one of his "pack," and spent the rest of his life wondering exactly where I went for days at a time. (My own house, as it was).

My next-door neighbors when I was growing up, a nice middle-aged couple named Bill and Susan, had a miniature Collie named Clyde. Clyde was an incredibly well-trained dog - he would sit out on the grass at Bill's house, and wouldn't leave the yard for anything. (Well, until the day when I was about eight and coaxed Clyde into my backyard, and proudly told Bill how I'd gotten his dog to follow me. He didn't seem too happy about that).

Amanda is truly one of my oldest friends, since the early days of sixth grade at Pine Middle School in Los Alamitos. Incidentally, if you hit that Pine link, you'll see they renamed our beloved middle school after Christa McAuliffe, the teacher lost in the Challenger space shuttle accident back in 1986. Not to begrudge naming a school for her and all, but that means the secondary schools in our district are all named for trees, save McAuliffe: Oak Middle, Los Alamitos High ["Cottonwood" in Spanish] and Laurel Continuation High. Ah, well, so much for consistency. (On a cool side note - several of the elementary schools in our district [except for Los Alamitos Elementary and Rossmoor Elementary, of course] were named for signers of the Declaration of Independence. For example, I attended Benjamin Rush Elementary, named for the famous doctor and revolutionary. Other schools included Francis Hopkinson (most likely the actual creator of the American flag, not Betsy Ross), and Richard Henry Lee).

Anyway, asides aside, I was talking about Amanda, and how we have been such good friends down through the years. When we were about fifteen, she and her mom got a dog that they named "Misty," as short for "mischevious." (Bethanyites - know that K.C., aka Ken Thomas, was the only person ever known to man to acutally wear that dog out). Knowing how much I wanted a dog, Amanda actually approached my dad about letting me have one.

See, my parents had me when they were older (mom was 44, dad was 42), and they'd done the dog and cat thing with my older brothers (who were 16 and 13 when I was born). They had had enough of boys not taking care of their pets, cleaning up after them, etc. etc. etc., so I ended up with lame pets like Charlie the guinea pig (a ball of fluff that mysteriously was "given to the clown who lives down the street" - my dad's way of shielding me from either a) the thing's death or b) the presence of a homicidal, guinea pig-stealing clown living on Birchwood Avenue in the mid-70s).

I also had a tortoise that my dad had found making its way across the road at his place of work in San Pedro. This tortoise (which, creatively, I also named "Charlie") had the free reign of our backyard, which meant he'd crawl around and chew old lettuce we'd throw out in the grass and he'd occasionally poop on the patio slab. I'm thinking it was things like that which precipitated his "disappearance" - he, quite simply, was no longer in the yard one day. The yard, being of the Southern California suburban-sprawl-postage-stamp variety, wasn't terribly big, but that didn't stop me from scouring the yard for hours at a time, trying to find him.

Not that he was terribly hard to find.

See, my dad, being a practical man, worried that he'd run his Lawn-Boy front-throwing single-stroke Briggs and Stratton-powered lawn mower from hell over the thing, and having my little Charlie shredded and neatly thrown into a grasscatcher would have been far, far, far too traumatic for me.

So, he came up with a practical solution, one that men, real MEN the world over should recognize as bold, brave, and friggin' smart:


He spray-painted a massive yellow "X" on the tortoise's back.


No joke.


I'm figuring that Charlie the Tortoise's relocation to the clown down the street's house involved some kind of bird of prey who thought, what the hell? It has a target on its back?!?!?