Testimony of a Saved Singleton, Part 1
Dad pulled into the driveway and squinted through the screen of our front porch before turning off the car. I still wasn’t sure why we’d gone on the car ride in the first place; we’d had no destination to speak of. But on that unusually sticky spring day I was glad to take him up on the truck’s air-conditioning and the chance to belt out some Fleetwood Mac with him and the surround sound speakers. Dad wanted to play some Paul Simon too, but I told him we could only listen to “Call Me Al” which, in my five year-old opinion, was Simon’s best work.
“Well,” he awkwardly started in a pitch higher than his normal range, “Mom’s on the porch and it looks like we might have another visitor too.” My dad never was one for subtlety.
I squeezed my eyelids like he had done but could only make out mom’s figure through the screen. I squinted harder and scrunched my nose. Either Dad was seeing things or he knew something I didn’t. We hopped out of the car and he rushed ahead of me to block the door. Again, no master of surprise, he watched behind him for my approach and waved me as close to the entryway as possible. Gingerly, he opened the door and hurried us both in.
There sat my mother Indian-style, a big grin on her face, praising us for arriving just in time. She looked down at her lap and I followed her gaze until, there between her folded legs, I saw the smallest, curliest, most violently quivering ball of fur I have ever seen. I thought it might be a puppy but I couldn’t be quite sure since it had securely planted its face deep within the cavern of my mother’s knee.
“Let’s see if we can get her to come out and say hello.” Mom cooed as she gently extracted the shivering fuzz ball and placed it in front of me. The dog, which I could now confirm it was, became suddenly aware that two more giants had entered the room, took one look at me and promptly vomited half her body weight onto my foot. My eyes widened.
“Can we keep her?”
And so Daisy-Cricket Slimer Bellefeuille became a member of our family that day. Her name was decided within the time it took to clean-off my foot. The hyphenated first name was a compromise between the names my father and I each wanted (my choice getting top billing of course). Slimer was stuck in the middle partially because of my great love for the Ghostbusters at that time but also because of what she had done to my shoe.
Part 2 tomorrow...
“Well,” he awkwardly started in a pitch higher than his normal range, “Mom’s on the porch and it looks like we might have another visitor too.” My dad never was one for subtlety.
I squeezed my eyelids like he had done but could only make out mom’s figure through the screen. I squinted harder and scrunched my nose. Either Dad was seeing things or he knew something I didn’t. We hopped out of the car and he rushed ahead of me to block the door. Again, no master of surprise, he watched behind him for my approach and waved me as close to the entryway as possible. Gingerly, he opened the door and hurried us both in.
There sat my mother Indian-style, a big grin on her face, praising us for arriving just in time. She looked down at her lap and I followed her gaze until, there between her folded legs, I saw the smallest, curliest, most violently quivering ball of fur I have ever seen. I thought it might be a puppy but I couldn’t be quite sure since it had securely planted its face deep within the cavern of my mother’s knee.
“Let’s see if we can get her to come out and say hello.” Mom cooed as she gently extracted the shivering fuzz ball and placed it in front of me. The dog, which I could now confirm it was, became suddenly aware that two more giants had entered the room, took one look at me and promptly vomited half her body weight onto my foot. My eyes widened.
“Can we keep her?”
And so Daisy-Cricket Slimer Bellefeuille became a member of our family that day. Her name was decided within the time it took to clean-off my foot. The hyphenated first name was a compromise between the names my father and I each wanted (my choice getting top billing of course). Slimer was stuck in the middle partially because of my great love for the Ghostbusters at that time but also because of what she had done to my shoe.
Part 2 tomorrow...