Two for Abby

She's done it again: my violently anti-social Australian Shepherd has handily underscored my own personal deficits by achieving something we all once thought was impossible-- she's made a friend.

Today, while I sat moping on the front stoop, having been snubbed by the Breeders (total grim coincidence-- nothing to do with the blog and my karmic fit of conscience), Abby trotted over to the dog who lives next door, gave her a wide smile, and then slammed both front paws flat against the earth with her ass high in the air-- the play bow. What followed was the most joyful and elaborate choreography I've seen outside of a concert hall. Both dogs are mutts, but both are sleek, leggy, and built for speed. They tore tight figure eights in the grass, churning up clumps of dirt and leaves, and weaving over, under, and above each other, tumbling and diving and yipping and then both skidding to simultaneous halts to crouch briefly before leaping back into the chase. It was like watching two Russian prima ballerinas dancing a tribute to the Motherland, if Russian prima ballerinas occasionally sniffed each other's asses.

Watching her brought me some small measure of joy after a morning were I'd had flashbacks to the dismal politics of high school pecking orders. Life as a military spouse in the tiny, tiny town is apparently a much more delicate task than I had imagined. Providing further detail would be fruitless, since I myself don't understand how it all fits together. In some ways I feel like I finally understand the stress of being a CDC outbreak investigator-- you've got a town full of people vomiting blood, and then some random scraps of facts like "Farmer X has some sick pigs," "a busload of Canadian tourists came in for a convention and one had a cough," and "the city just started spraying for mosquitoes." All you really know for sure is that things are hopelessly fucked up, and now you've got a whole stack of tiny incidentals that somehow add up to the cause of it all.

Having been on the receiving end of a karmic kick to the crotch anyway, I figured why not put the Breeder post back up? After all, what is a blog for if not to document life's crotch kicks and high fives in real time for later frame-by-frame analysis.

The frame I want to focus on tonight is the one right after the blow, when the kickee's face is still in that universal "O" of shock, and before any decision has been made about further damage control or active retaliation. It's a frame I tend to get stuck in. I like to freeze the action and step outside, Matrix-like, and float all around the situation, admiring the placement of the kick, the way the kickee's back is hunched in receipt of the momentum, and then the little insignificant details-- look at the dead leaves on the sidewalk beneath them, look at their shadows, what pretty clouds...

It's as if at the moment of impact, the start of a conflict, I suddenly shatter into a thousand possible conclusions and reactions, each shooting out from a central point in a slow and graceful sunburst, kind of like the explosion of the Death Star in the uselessly souped-up version of Star Wars, Episode Four. It's a handy trick for intellectualizing emotional pain, but it also leaves the kickee standing there, vacant and pontificating, while the kicker winds up another one.

Abby's reaction would be simpler and much more honest-- bared teeth and a quick bite to the muzzle-- but I am somehow expected to employ finesse. What I'll likely resort to is my old standby, which is often misinterpreted as coolheadedness or thick skinned resilience. I'll stand back and wait. Somehow there exists at the core of my being a cheerful assumption that the first kick was a mistake. Surely you didn't realize that was my crotch you were punting! Only after kick number two will I rev up a response, and only, of course, after more analysis and some spirited coaching from my beleaguered support staff, who have been forced to review the footage as well.

Call it being a pussy, but even more than being safe, I like to be right.