Campus Currents
Shifting Sands: I'd rather sleep through this goodbyeThursday, May 08, 2008 By Claire Sands
I've had a bad history with pets. There was my pet mouse that got eaten by my brother's rat, the guinea pig that got lost in my house (still haven't found that little guy, but we did eat a "roast" last week that looked suspiciously like a small pet store rodent ), the dog that had to have its eye removed, and the cat that drowned in the pool. Not good, I know. All were equally gruesome and have cumulatively resulted in a large number of unpaid therapist bills. Whatever, I'm over it. My latest run-in with bad doggie karma was fairly recent. It all started one Saturday in February. I was exhausted from Mardi Gras-ing all night in New Orleans and had promptly collapsed into my bed at 7 a.m. It sounds good so far, right? Wrong. I was in the middle of an unnaturally induced stupor when I was rudely awakened. My dad started saying something about hair, but I had no clue what. I quickly forgot about this incident, and decided to play with my dog, Harry, who I hadn't seen in a few days, but he was nowhere to be found. Then I remembered what my dad had said when I was sleeping. It wasn't "Claire, you're getting too hairy," like I'd thought. No, he said, "Say 'bye to Harry, we're giving him away'." MY PARENTS GAVE MY DOG AWAY WHILE I WAS TAKING A NAP. There has got to be some child abuse law this falls under. But, life goes on, and after mourning the loss of my sweet, loving dog for about the length of that creepy Lifewater commercial (the one with those geckos ) I did, after all, have my other dog, Louie. But as they say, history repeats itself. And it did. Instead of giving my dogs away at the same time, my parents made this a long, drawn-out process. They gave Louie away about a month later, while I was yet again taking a nap. This is where Connie and Gene (my parents) lose points for creativity. You would think they could change it up a little at least, just to keep me on edge. It was almost like losing a cell phone or an ipod, but not quite. But now that I'm getting ready to move on to a new chapter of my life and see some of my friends for the last time before they move away, I see that my parents were just trying to teach me a valuable lesson (You're right, getting rid of the dogs had nothing to do with life lessons, but for the sake of this column, it does). The lesson is this: Spend as much time as you can with those that you love, because you never know when they're parents will decide to give them away to the nice couple down the street (Well, the moral is something like that, I think). |