Passengers aboard flight 022107, I present you this first post as a substitute for yesterday's void, an unfortunate result of lack of sleep and a faulty internet connection at mi casa. The story that I am about to relay has not been fabricated in any way, and if anything at all, it is a less dramatic version of the truth of the situation, as I don't think any amount of palabras, even written in ALL CAPS could convey properly just how loca my mom acted in her story's role. I bring this story up in the first place because it was brought to my remembrance today during lunch after church with my kid sib and the Hellion, and the re-telling of it created so much laughter that I ceased breathing for a few seconds and sib jarred two cups of café so violently that our entire table was eventually covered in liquid basura. Gracias hermana.
My unfortunate tale took place circa Labor Day weekend when I was in my mid-teens, and occurred during a week-long period when my padre was out of the country on a mission trip to South America. I should have known to expect some semblance of a tragedy brewing in his absence, as mom always says so optimistically when he leaves "The devil always attacks this family when your dad is gone." Muy bien. Muy bien. Particpants in the day's events: Mom (Asian and overdramatic), Kid Sib (just old enough to understand the words that were coming out of ma's mouth later but too young to comprehend the sheer gravity of the actual situation), Brother, whom I will refer to as Jeckyl henceforth due to his bi-polar tendencies, and Moi. Let me preface the telling of the actual day's events that I have never been an animal person—hate when cats rub up against my leg, only swerve to avoid squirrels, but barely, never ever will kiss or hold a pet and tend to stiff arm them upon approach, and have a gag reflex that kicks in instinctively when I see people driving around with a dog in their cars, especially when the mutt has its head poking out of the half-rolled down window, ears flapping and tongue wagging. Puke. My disdain for animals is so strong that I read a Cosmo article recently about the extremely caliente actor Chris Evans (Fantastic Four's only redeeming quality) and how a must for him in a female is the acceptance of a dog sleeping in their bed with them. He instantly lost 50 hot points. With that said, I must let it be known that there has been one animal over the course of my 25 years that was able to garner my attention and a subsequent piece of my corazon, and his name was Tut.
Tut was a small dog, a blend of some sort with a spot surrounding one eye, similar to the RCA versions, who loved to run and leap, and a possessed a swagger that even penetrated my bitchy animal-despising exterior into the heart of me, as if he was constantly saying "I'm cute, play with me, be with me, love me," and actually causing people to buy into the idea. He was the Obama of the animal world, and for the record, I voted Republican. And for the record, spare me your liberal bullshit. But that's a totally different post…I'm not certain what possessed my dad to name him Tut, but as absolutely random stupidity is the foundation for any of the names he and kid sib (the only pro-animals in our family of cinco) have chosen for our various pets, I shouldn't have been surprised. Exhibit 'A': Our current outside beagle is named, get this, Jasper Blue Graysier Roosevelt or some nutty shit like that. Explains a lot actually. So Tut, who I loved, on one of the fated days of my dad's exit out of Indiana, passed away. After our attempts to piece together the events that led up to his death later on in the day, this is what we assume que paso'ed. Tut had been ignorantly chained to the swing on our porch, (I'm blaming my Asian mom here), and had a relatively short leash he was hooked up to. Something, (I'm blaming one of the devilish perros in our neighborhood), came into our yard and got his attention and whipped him into a frenzy in which he ended up a little too close to the edge of the porch and slipped off. The chain he was hooked up to despite the bit of slack that the porch swing would have provided was not long enough to place his feet on the ground and the poor little sonofabitch ended up literally hanging from his own personal gallows. And he had done nothing wrong. Pobrecito. I will not dwell on these morbid details any longer, but needed to set the stage and tone for the events that would follow, in which my Oscar-deserving madre would go on to scar my sibs and I for life based on her portrayal of Filipino gone wild with grief over little dead dog. I'm not sure why she even freaked out so much, I thought they ate dogs in her homeland and that the prospect of a lifeless canine would whet her appetite, and not invoke nut-job amounts of sobbing. All three of us kids were for some reason that morning asleep all together in she and dad's water bed, and I will never for the life or therapy of me, forget being startled awake that day by her shrieking like a banshee, as if she had just watched one of us kids or dad being beheaded. "TUT'S DEADDDDDDDDDDDDDD, TUT'S DEADDDDDDDDDDDDDDD" she shouted over and over and over, wailing like it was an African funeral ritual, and all three of us hadn't just been sound asleep and weren't overall pretty young and impressionable. It was already disorienting enough to be startled awake for any reason, and this took the fucking chocolate cake. I still have never forgotten the literal pitch of her screams and crying.
Either way, we all groggily stumbled outside to the scene of the crime, and as if it weren't already heinous enough that mom woke us in the manner that she did, she took her solid parenting skills to the next level of desensitivity in the fact that before we went to view Tut, she had failed to even take his semi-rigid lifeless little body off the chain. Dear God mom. Dear God. We all proceeded to jump into the grief hole she had dug earlier, and I didn't actually stop crying until later that night. It was during that moment standing outside looking bleary-eyed at him that I vowed inwardly that I would never, in a million years, give any part of my heart to another animal, that no cat, dog, fish, or penguin would ever hurt me like Tut had in his death. I proceeded not only to lose my only beloved that day, but also a bit of my faith, as after a family friend of ours buried him in a small plot under a tree in our backyard, I and kid sib ventured out the site, and sat cross-legged in front of the fresh dirt. I don't know what possessed me to do what came next, maybe it was a lifetime of three church services a week and seeing my dad pray for the sick, or the fact that I knew my heart was broken and dad's would be too upon return, but I decided I would lay hands on the earth in front of me and pray that if God loved us that he would raise Tut from the dead. I am dead freaking serious with this, I sobbed and begged and pleaded the blood of Jesus over the Devil that I was convinced had killed Tut, and plea bargained with Dios that if he would give him life again and bring him out of the grave like Lazarus, that I would change my life, and trust me here people, I was tame at that age, didn't really do anything bad at all, so maybe that's why he didn't answer my prayer, b/c the bargain sucked, I could probably promise him a life change now and bring anyone back to vida. I don't know what I would have done if God actually did cause my dog to come poking up out the ground and bounding into my arms, but as kid sib said today as we rehashed this tale, "Sib, I had so much faith that your prayer was going to work too. It was so real. But if Tut would have come back to life, I would have never been the same; we would have ended up in Africa as missionaries because I would have been so touched." So God, there was your chance to get me to evangelize for always, right out under the tree at home.
On a sidenote, I was woke up unexpectedly again in my 19th year by my roomie at the time, the Hellion, who startled me yet again with crying, this time involving thousands of tadpoles she had attempted earlier to save out of our backyard pool, only to kill them later by putting them in an empty bucket that had chemical residue left in it, unbeknownst to her. This incident is memorable, but didn't do anything to me other than get me out of bed and make me feel like I lost about a half an hour of my life that I would never be able to get back. Love you anyway B.
I'll be back in a few. I'm off to dinner with some friends. Xoxo to all, and to all a good nite.
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