Oh, the humanity! We bolted to the car. I don’t really know why we felt we had to run, it was just a reflex really. Well we got there and the windows, that we should have been able to see through, were all steamed up. It was not a good sign.
Jaco was inside and we could hear the poor boy whimpering like he thought he was going to get in big trouble. Oh it still gives me those little internal retches to think about it, and this happened like over two decades ago!
I’ll just come out and say it frankly: the dog had spewed diarrhea all over the Shelby’s interior. He had apparently jumped into the back seat as well as the front seat attempting to find another way out of his little prison, so there was no place inside the car that escaped trauma.
I swear, Jaco, I really meant to be gone for only 30 seconds!
The odor was just gag-awful and someone came back out of the bar with a great big package of bar napkins for us and a wastebasket. Well there was a lot of laughter in the Speakeasy’s parking lot that night, let me tell ya! Oh yeah they could chuckle, but they weren’t coming within 20 feet of us. Eddie and I must have been there for hours wiping up soggy doggy-doo with bar napkins just so we could tolerate it enough to operate the vehicle. Yeah, now it was nothing more than a vehicle. That was such a hideous mess! I kept asking Eddie what he fed Jaco. Well, the Shelby Charger was no longer my sports car; this event, while very small on the global perspective, it just shattered me and my entire life’s paradigm shifted.
And you know what, I didn’t get even a single one of my friends’ phone numbers that night to show for my foolish efforts to get back in touch. It cost me $340.00 to have the interior detailed to the point where it could be driven again. Right before I transferred to a new duty station, I traded it in on another car. No. No, as a matter of fact, I did NOT tell the dealership what that funny “new car smell” was about.
J.P.T.
Monday, July 6, 2009
THE SO-CLAMORED-FOR TALE - TRUCK IN THE PARKING LOT
Okay, so Jaco has been injected with the spew-factor-3 medicine and we are on our way back to Eddie’s house. Everything was smooth sailing and Eddie was back to his normal self. Actually Eddie’s mood took a noticeably good turn after the vet explained that money, even of the paper persuasion, holds up very well in most pets.
I had another great friend when I was in high-school. His name was Greg, and actually we’d been friends since junior high, a.k.a. middle school. But hey, who’s going to count the years when you’re best friends, right? Wow the stories I could tell! A Greg had a pickup truck. Oh no, not just any pickup. He got a job just so he could customize the thing, and customize he did. First of all it had a lift-kit, flashy rims, and gargantuan tires, a superbly detailed paint job. You had to have some powerful thighs to jettison yourself up into the cab. Oh yeah, he technically had a pickup truck, but you were NOT going to call Greg to help you move!
Funny that he was a Christian when we were growing up and I was not. Then we went our separate ways: he went to college and I went into the military. Greg succumbed to the liberal rantings of leftist whacko profs, the allure of feminists who were ready to discard everything about themselves that made them precious, and the stupid dimwit cries of his partying humanist “friends” there at those places of supposed higher learning and he abandoned the truth. I, on the other hand, came to recognize that Jesus was the truth, the way, and the life, while I was in the service. Now Greg did eventually return to his senses, but like many humans, he had to hit bottom before he looked back upward.
Well, there we were tooling on down the road with Jaco in the hatchback of my pretty sports car, when lo and behold what did I spy in the parking lot of the Speakeasy Bar-n-Grill? Of course, it was none other than Greg’s unmistakable pickup truck sitting head and shoulders above all the other vehicles there under the floodlight’s beacon. There was no doubt. Now, Greg and I had lost touch with each other, he moved several times, I was transferred several times and his parents moved as well so this was likely the only opportunity I was going to have (unless he showed up at some future high school reunion) to get back in touch.
Eddie saw the truck same as I did and was excited but was pretty apprehensive too, saying that we didn’t want to be late getting Jaco into a tub before he started letting loose with the $50 bill and whatever might be accompanying it.
“No worries.” I said, “I’m just gonna get his phone number and we’re gone.”
Yes, that was the plan. I zipped into the parking lot and Eddie and I ran inside. Greg was there, bigger than life and apparently with a whole entourage of other friends of ours from high school, including Nate. Oh man, it was great! We were laughing and hugging and everyone was slapping everyone else on the back – I was just overcome with seeing so many friendly and familiar faces. I remember telling Greg how shocked I was that he still had the custom truck what with college expenses and all. He explained how he managed everything (he mooched off his folks as much as he could – ah the character-developing secrets to life you learn at our fine universities nowadays!) and then he asked what I was driving.
That was the moment that time sort of stood still. All the sound around me in that bar just sort of deepened and slurred. Eddie and I looked wide-eyed at each other and screamed running out the door.
J.P.T.
I had another great friend when I was in high-school. His name was Greg, and actually we’d been friends since junior high, a.k.a. middle school. But hey, who’s going to count the years when you’re best friends, right? Wow the stories I could tell! A Greg had a pickup truck. Oh no, not just any pickup. He got a job just so he could customize the thing, and customize he did. First of all it had a lift-kit, flashy rims, and gargantuan tires, a superbly detailed paint job. You had to have some powerful thighs to jettison yourself up into the cab. Oh yeah, he technically had a pickup truck, but you were NOT going to call Greg to help you move!
Funny that he was a Christian when we were growing up and I was not. Then we went our separate ways: he went to college and I went into the military. Greg succumbed to the liberal rantings of leftist whacko profs, the allure of feminists who were ready to discard everything about themselves that made them precious, and the stupid dimwit cries of his partying humanist “friends” there at those places of supposed higher learning and he abandoned the truth. I, on the other hand, came to recognize that Jesus was the truth, the way, and the life, while I was in the service. Now Greg did eventually return to his senses, but like many humans, he had to hit bottom before he looked back upward.
Well, there we were tooling on down the road with Jaco in the hatchback of my pretty sports car, when lo and behold what did I spy in the parking lot of the Speakeasy Bar-n-Grill? Of course, it was none other than Greg’s unmistakable pickup truck sitting head and shoulders above all the other vehicles there under the floodlight’s beacon. There was no doubt. Now, Greg and I had lost touch with each other, he moved several times, I was transferred several times and his parents moved as well so this was likely the only opportunity I was going to have (unless he showed up at some future high school reunion) to get back in touch.
Eddie saw the truck same as I did and was excited but was pretty apprehensive too, saying that we didn’t want to be late getting Jaco into a tub before he started letting loose with the $50 bill and whatever might be accompanying it.
“No worries.” I said, “I’m just gonna get his phone number and we’re gone.”
Yes, that was the plan. I zipped into the parking lot and Eddie and I ran inside. Greg was there, bigger than life and apparently with a whole entourage of other friends of ours from high school, including Nate. Oh man, it was great! We were laughing and hugging and everyone was slapping everyone else on the back – I was just overcome with seeing so many friendly and familiar faces. I remember telling Greg how shocked I was that he still had the custom truck what with college expenses and all. He explained how he managed everything (he mooched off his folks as much as he could – ah the character-developing secrets to life you learn at our fine universities nowadays!) and then he asked what I was driving.
That was the moment that time sort of stood still. All the sound around me in that bar just sort of deepened and slurred. Eddie and I looked wide-eyed at each other and screamed running out the door.
J.P.T.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
THE SO-CLAMORED-FOR TALE - TO THE VET AND HOME, QUICK!
All right, I successfully stayed the execution of poor Jaco, Eddie’s elderly malnourished but friendly mutt. Now Jaco is enjoying a relaxing ride to the vet. I knew a place that wasn’t too far away, the vet I knew right around the corner from my grandparent’s house. It was only a 20 minute trip, during which I made small talk with Eddie while secretly wondering about the effect of digestive juices’ on American currency.
Fortunately the vet was there, it was a fluke that he had just finished an emergency surgery on a Dachsund. I’m sure the vet meant Dachsund, although with his oriental accent, he pronounced it Datsun. Anyway, our visit was wonderfully short and sweet although we didn’t get the news we were hoping for. By the way “short” is not a dig at the vet, who was possibly the shortest man I’ve ever met. He was even shorter than my grandmother! There were little step-stools all over the premises, it was cute, but we did not laugh at him. (Well, not until later in the car, at least.)
I assumed the vet would just give him some syrup of ipecac or a similar medication to make the dog upchuck the contents of his stomach, a.k.a., the $50 bill. The doctor explained that a dog of Jaco’s age, as well as his being undernourished (he said “malnourished” wasn’t an accurate description of ol’ Jaco) made induced vomiting dangerous for him. He recommended an injection which would cause Jaco to “pass” everything through. It would take around a half-hour for the medicine to start working and would then cause his digestive system to evacuate everything out Jaco’s rear end for about an hour. This brought humorous images to mind, but the vet continued to explain to us in great scientific detail why this course would be gentler on Jaco’s sensitive system than inducing vomiting. It nearly all went over our heads, but we nodded confidently and enthusiastically in hopes that the doctor would stop showing off.
Yes, so the numbers ran like this: $25.00 for the vet visit, a $40.00 after-hours emergency fee, and $23.75 for the injection. So I was out $88.75, not including the $50.00 that had taken up temporary residence inside Jaco. This was a rather expensive visit to ol’ Eddie. I look back on this now as one of the most tremendous (non-military) bonding experiences I’ve ever had, so the money wasn’t really important.
So the little veterinarian man got Jaco and the injection ready, Eddie and I were ready: I paid at the front desk and had then parked the car right outside the back door of the clinic). Jaco was such a cool dog, he didn’t flinch or even whimper! I know, I’m still impressed by that, too. The doctor administered the shot, then Eddie and I whisked him out the back door into the hatchback and we shot off like a bat outta hell.
We were hitting all green lights so we were sure to get home quite a bit faster than it took to arrive at the vet’s. Things were going even better than expected. Eddie and I were joking and laughing like old times. Like that one time that I was in a food fight with a friend of ours named Kurt. It started with him flicking little pieces of potato salad at me with a plastic spoon in the cafeteria. Well I was trying to woo a really nice and foxy girl at the time. I didn’t know how to handle the bits of food that kept coming my way and so I wound up losing the girl. Needless to say, I was pretty ticked off at Kurt. So I filled my mouth with fruit cocktail and walked by Kurt. I acted as if I was going to say something, but then instead I lurched and “puked” the fruit cocktail on his jeans. Kurt was mortified and the whole cafeteria was in an uproar. It was a most satisfying moment. Kurt and I continued getting more and more ingenious with our digestible matter battles, and we eventually called a truce and became friends again, but that moment lives on in infamy.
Yes, everything was going according to plan, once again, until I saw “the truck.”
J.P.T.
Fortunately the vet was there, it was a fluke that he had just finished an emergency surgery on a Dachsund. I’m sure the vet meant Dachsund, although with his oriental accent, he pronounced it Datsun. Anyway, our visit was wonderfully short and sweet although we didn’t get the news we were hoping for. By the way “short” is not a dig at the vet, who was possibly the shortest man I’ve ever met. He was even shorter than my grandmother! There were little step-stools all over the premises, it was cute, but we did not laugh at him. (Well, not until later in the car, at least.)
I assumed the vet would just give him some syrup of ipecac or a similar medication to make the dog upchuck the contents of his stomach, a.k.a., the $50 bill. The doctor explained that a dog of Jaco’s age, as well as his being undernourished (he said “malnourished” wasn’t an accurate description of ol’ Jaco) made induced vomiting dangerous for him. He recommended an injection which would cause Jaco to “pass” everything through. It would take around a half-hour for the medicine to start working and would then cause his digestive system to evacuate everything out Jaco’s rear end for about an hour. This brought humorous images to mind, but the vet continued to explain to us in great scientific detail why this course would be gentler on Jaco’s sensitive system than inducing vomiting. It nearly all went over our heads, but we nodded confidently and enthusiastically in hopes that the doctor would stop showing off.
Yes, so the numbers ran like this: $25.00 for the vet visit, a $40.00 after-hours emergency fee, and $23.75 for the injection. So I was out $88.75, not including the $50.00 that had taken up temporary residence inside Jaco. This was a rather expensive visit to ol’ Eddie. I look back on this now as one of the most tremendous (non-military) bonding experiences I’ve ever had, so the money wasn’t really important.
So the little veterinarian man got Jaco and the injection ready, Eddie and I were ready: I paid at the front desk and had then parked the car right outside the back door of the clinic). Jaco was such a cool dog, he didn’t flinch or even whimper! I know, I’m still impressed by that, too. The doctor administered the shot, then Eddie and I whisked him out the back door into the hatchback and we shot off like a bat outta hell.
We were hitting all green lights so we were sure to get home quite a bit faster than it took to arrive at the vet’s. Things were going even better than expected. Eddie and I were joking and laughing like old times. Like that one time that I was in a food fight with a friend of ours named Kurt. It started with him flicking little pieces of potato salad at me with a plastic spoon in the cafeteria. Well I was trying to woo a really nice and foxy girl at the time. I didn’t know how to handle the bits of food that kept coming my way and so I wound up losing the girl. Needless to say, I was pretty ticked off at Kurt. So I filled my mouth with fruit cocktail and walked by Kurt. I acted as if I was going to say something, but then instead I lurched and “puked” the fruit cocktail on his jeans. Kurt was mortified and the whole cafeteria was in an uproar. It was a most satisfying moment. Kurt and I continued getting more and more ingenious with our digestible matter battles, and we eventually called a truce and became friends again, but that moment lives on in infamy.
Yes, everything was going according to plan, once again, until I saw “the truck.”
J.P.T.
Friday, July 3, 2009
THE SO-CLAMORED-FOR TALE - ENTER JACO
Yes, I had the $50 bill in my hand, pinched between my thumb and index finger and I handed it to Eddie across the table. You know how, every once in a while, you hand something to someone and you swear they’ve got it, but then you let go and discover that they didn’t? Well, yeah, it happened. I handed the bill over and I swore Eddie had it but I let go and instead of floating farther over toward Eddie’s side of the table, it plopped right into the gravy bowl.
Now I was really embarrassed! The dog, Jaco, is getting friendly on my leg, I am eating food that really should be eaten by my starving but gracious host, I am giving money to help a man who had to discard his pride and dignity to ask for pity, and now that little bit of charity has been fumbled right smack dab into his meager rations. Well Eddie didn’t let a little gravy get him down. He simply took the 50-dollar bill out of the gravy and gave it a little shake near the floor.
Let’s not forget about the Jaco, now. As soon as Eddie turned with the bill, the dog vacated my leg and went over to Eddie’s side of the card table. I didn’t see Jaco with my eyes, but I heard the squishy slurp, and I was wondering if Jaco did what I thought he did.
Eddie bolted out of his chair and grabbed Jaco in what I can only describe as being some of the most masterful rodeo calf-tying I’ve ever seen – except Eddie didn’t tie Jaco, he just “secured” him with his leg while he pried Jaco’s mouth open and proceeded to do a little spelunking to fish that bill out.
I’ll hand it to Eddie and to Jaco: I’ve never seen a man with enough guts to thrust his hand down a hungry dog’s throat, and I’ve never seen a hungry dog permit a man reach into his gullet. Well, accolades aside, Eddie did not retrieve the bill.
At this point, I saw a side of Eddie which I’d never seen or heard: pure fury. Eddie straddled Jaco on the floor with his legs contorted a little to maximize his control over the poor beast. He kept one hand planted firmly at the base of Jaco’s skull while he rooted through the little array of cardboard boxes that sufficed for kitchen cabinets and drawers. He finally found what he was looking for – a steak knife.
Zut-alors – he intended to cut the dog open to get that $50 bill! I proclaimed every kind of “whoah” word that I could think of and rapidly suggested that we just take Jaco to a vet so he could just puke it up. There was a tense moment while Eddie mulled this over but after a few moments he agreed that was the best thing to do. Praise the Lord! I could only imagine what would have ensued if he had rejected the vet idea.
Now I still thought that my idea to take Jaco to the vet was a good one, but I kicked myself anyway. Why? Why?!?!?! Well because I had a nice shiny sportscar, THAT’s why! All right, it was a choice: risk getting the sportscar dirty or cut the dog open. Okay, I put Jaco in the back. He laid down like a very good doggy.
Right now I was thinking something along the lines of the evil emperor in Star Wars, “Everything’s going according to plaaaan.”
Things we’re going well at the moment, but that was going to be short-lived moment.
J.P.T.
Now I was really embarrassed! The dog, Jaco, is getting friendly on my leg, I am eating food that really should be eaten by my starving but gracious host, I am giving money to help a man who had to discard his pride and dignity to ask for pity, and now that little bit of charity has been fumbled right smack dab into his meager rations. Well Eddie didn’t let a little gravy get him down. He simply took the 50-dollar bill out of the gravy and gave it a little shake near the floor.
Let’s not forget about the Jaco, now. As soon as Eddie turned with the bill, the dog vacated my leg and went over to Eddie’s side of the card table. I didn’t see Jaco with my eyes, but I heard the squishy slurp, and I was wondering if Jaco did what I thought he did.
Eddie bolted out of his chair and grabbed Jaco in what I can only describe as being some of the most masterful rodeo calf-tying I’ve ever seen – except Eddie didn’t tie Jaco, he just “secured” him with his leg while he pried Jaco’s mouth open and proceeded to do a little spelunking to fish that bill out.
I’ll hand it to Eddie and to Jaco: I’ve never seen a man with enough guts to thrust his hand down a hungry dog’s throat, and I’ve never seen a hungry dog permit a man reach into his gullet. Well, accolades aside, Eddie did not retrieve the bill.
At this point, I saw a side of Eddie which I’d never seen or heard: pure fury. Eddie straddled Jaco on the floor with his legs contorted a little to maximize his control over the poor beast. He kept one hand planted firmly at the base of Jaco’s skull while he rooted through the little array of cardboard boxes that sufficed for kitchen cabinets and drawers. He finally found what he was looking for – a steak knife.
Zut-alors – he intended to cut the dog open to get that $50 bill! I proclaimed every kind of “whoah” word that I could think of and rapidly suggested that we just take Jaco to a vet so he could just puke it up. There was a tense moment while Eddie mulled this over but after a few moments he agreed that was the best thing to do. Praise the Lord! I could only imagine what would have ensued if he had rejected the vet idea.
Now I still thought that my idea to take Jaco to the vet was a good one, but I kicked myself anyway. Why? Why?!?!?! Well because I had a nice shiny sportscar, THAT’s why! All right, it was a choice: risk getting the sportscar dirty or cut the dog open. Okay, I put Jaco in the back. He laid down like a very good doggy.
Right now I was thinking something along the lines of the evil emperor in Star Wars, “Everything’s going according to plaaaan.”
Things we’re going well at the moment, but that was going to be short-lived moment.
J.P.T.
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