The Collie's Comeuppance

The collie had been herding the rancher’s sheep on a little spread in Texas for most of his seven years. He was proud of his job and took it seriously. He was also brash, arrogant, and unlikable. If even one sheep looked like it was about to stray, the collie was on it in a flash, nipping at the sheep’s legs. All the sheep on the ranch bore nasty scars on their ankles, and they resented the collie and his guilty-until-forced-to-be-innocent approach to herding.

Image by Teece Aronin

“Y'all get back to the pack!” the collie would arrogantly command. “Get back to the pack!” He was frequently heard chanting this phrase as he trotted about the pastures, looking for any excuse to nip a sheep. 

“Back to the pack, my rack,” grumbled Mr. Ram at the barnyard’s summer flock party. "And besides, no sheep would be caught dead runnin' with a pack." He and his wife, Mrs. Ram were chatting with their friends, Mr. and Mrs. Goose, Mr. and Mrs. Bull, and Miss Pig.

“I feel so sorry for you poor sheep,” said Mrs. Bull. “Your little legs must be worn to the bone with that awful collie nippin' away at them!”

“I was just thinkin' the same thing,” said Miss Pig, gazing at Mr. Ram's scarred and spindly legs. “Those legs don't have a scrap of fat to spare, poor things.”

“And the way he pokes that big honker of his between your feet to trip y'all on purpose,” said Mrs. Goose. “That's just bullying! Oh, sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Bull! I meant that’s just mean.”

Mrs. Bull had always complained to her husband that Mrs. Goose was just as mean as that old collie but that at least the collie wasn't sneaky. Here was another example, taking a poke at them and pretending it was a mistake. 

“I know what I’d do if I was you sheep,” said Mr. Goose.

“What?” asked Mr. Ram.

“I’d beat him at his own game, and those guys are the ones I'd get to help me." He nodded toward the barn cats. There were four of them, lined up against a fence, one of them lazily picking his teeth with a splinter. They were known for being lean and mean and fast. Meanwhile, on a gate nearby lounged the ranch dogs - two terrier mixes, a bloodhound, a beagle, and the collie. The dogs and the cats always called a truce during flock parties, but never would they mix. 

Mr. Goose looked over at the collie. “Someday that dog is gonna get his.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” said Mrs. Bull, smiling when she saw that she had infuriated Mrs. Goose.

"Oops, I'm sorry," said Mrs. Bull. "I forgot - y'all don't have lips - or ears either!"  

As the flock party was breaking up, Mr. Goose could be seen chatting quietly with Mr. Ram, his wing draped over the ram's shoulder. Mr. Ram was nodding, looking grave. Then Mr. Goose waved the barn cats over. After a few more minutes of quiet talk, the group burst out laughing. 

The next night at midnight, Mr. Ram, Mr. Goose, and the cats met up behind some hay bales. 

"Did you bring the stuff?" Mr. Goose asked the ram. 

"Yeah. Got the net wrapped up in the blanket." 

"Do you think your wife'll miss it?"

"What, the blanket?"

"Yeah."

"Nah, it's wool - we've got dozens of 'em."

"Okay," said Mr. Goose. "Hey, cats, gather 'round." The cats leaned in, listened attentively, and grinned.  

Within seconds, two of the cats had climbed a tree near the barn and jumped onto the roof. Then they unrolled more than 30 feet of netting and dangled it between them. The other cats eased the barn door open then slipped into the shadows. Mr. Ram stood about 50 feet from the doorway, spread his hind legs wide, and planted his feet in the dirt. Screwing up his courage, he cupped his hooves around his mouth and yelled.

"Hey, Ankle Biter! Your mama was Chewbacca, and your daddy was Big Bird!"

The collie sat bolt upright, blinking and trying to get his bearings. The sheep yelled again.

"Hey - Pencil Puss!"

The collie got a bead on the sheep and shot from his bed like a rocket. As soon as he crossed the barn's threshold, the cats dropped the net and the collie was trapped, kicking and snapping at the rope. The cats who had been waiting near the doorway, sprang into action, rolling the collie over a few times to ensure he was wrapped up tight. Then they threw the blanket over the portion of netting that covered his head to make sure he couldn't bite.

"We got him!" they yelled.

At that point, all the animals gathered around and took turns nipping at the collie's legs while he barked and growled, immobilized. But he did shake the blanket off long enough to shout at the other dogs. 

"Don't just stand there!" 

The dogs rushed over and nipped at him too."

"No!" the collie bellowed. "I meant do somethin' to help me!" At that point, the dogs just stepped back to stare at him stupidly.

When everyone who wanted a nip had gotten one, the cats rolled the collie roughly out of the net, dumping him at the feet of the other dogs.

The collie spent the next week propped up in the barn, his legs wrapped in gauze and a cone circling his head. The perplexed rancher could only scratch his head wondering what had happened.

And whenever they knew the rancher wouldn’t hear, the happy animals chorused these words: "Back to the pack!"

As for his part, the collie learned that arrogance and bullying were no way to herd sheep, and he began asking them politely to move this way and that whenever he tended them. And he couldn't be sure, but he was pretty well convinced that the sheep appreciated the way he treated them these days. 

But just in case, he started sleeping on top of the net.   

Tales of the Unexpected

Sometimes a snappy retort is welcomed and sometimes, not so much. Sometimes what comes from a loved one's mouth in our time of need is not what we expected to hear, and sometimes what comes out of our mouths is not what our loved ones expect either. 

Syd and Jon at that retort-ish stage.
Photo by Teece Aronin, all rights reserved. 

A few winters ago, during one of the worst winters on record, as huge swaths of the U.S. suffered through a polar vortex, I left work at 4 p.m. to take my son, Jon for an allergy shot. Then we hit the post office, tried to find our way back to an ice cream shop we like (I have no sane reason for that in the midst of a polar vortex), got lost, gave up on the ice cream shop, picked up my daughter, Syd, went to the store, then pulled into our apartment house parking lot four hours later. Everyone was a little on edge because the weather was truly awful. We sat in the car, dreaded getting out, and then I snapped.

"Great! We've been driving around for hours and now the whole evening is shot!" Jon looked over and said, "Mom, it's just one night out of thousands in your life. It's okay." I complimented Jon on being so wise. When we got out of the car, the wind hit us smack in the face. It felt like fistfuls of razor blades hurled by an unseen sadist.

"Oh, maaan!" Jon wailed. "I forgot I have to walk the stupid dog!" Watching him hustle up the walk, miserable from the cold, I called after him, "Jon! It’s just one night out of thousands in your life!" He flat-out ignored me and kept walking. I apologized later because using a child’s words of comfort against him is a low thing to do, but I was exhausted, cranky, and after all, it was a polar vortex.

One day, after I got rear-ended and my back was killing me, I asked Syd to bring me a glass of ice water and some ibuprofen. I was still a little loopy from a pain pill I'd had earlier, so as she handed the pills to me, I said, "Oh, thank you. Having you was such a good idea. Now I'm extra glad I did."

Syd smiled placidly and replied, "I'm not sure if you getting high on pain meds is a good idea. Kind of scared of what you'll say next.”

If I had thought she would say, "Aw, Mom, I love you," I was mistaken. 

This same kid sat in a high school classroom one first day of school as a girl came in, crying. Syd didn't know her, but she got up from her desk, walked to the girl and asked what happened. The girl explained that she'd just been bullied. "Do you need a hug?" Syd asked. The girl said she did, so Syd hugged her then stepped back and quipped, "Who do you want me to beat up?" I expect that show of support to her classmate will get her off the hook with the Universe for what she said when she handed me my pain pill.

Being a later life parent has its challenges but rarely do you expect them to come in the form of age-related sarcasm from your own kids. I was crossing the room one day when Jon, lying on the floor watching TV, reached out and wrapped his arms around my ankles. I smiled down at him, expecting an affectionate remark. What I didn't expect was, "I got your legs! Well, not exactly - maybe in another 40 years!"

Jon was an experienced quipster by that time, having tried out his early material on his grandmother when he was three. He was sick and I left him in the car with my mother while I ran into the pharmacy to pick up his prescription.

"Grandma," he said, "I'm gonna throw up."

"Just a minute, Jon," my mother said, scrambling around and searching for something he could vomit into. It took a minute, but she came up with an empty fast food bag, got out of the car using her cane, opened his door, leaned in and heard, "But not today."

Could there ever come a time when thinking of those moments with my kids won't make me smile? Maybe.

"But not today."

Certainly not today.

Waiting For the Bus

It was at a party for her daughter's eighth birthday, in the midst of a whole lot of hoopla, that we had this conversation, the other mommy and I. As parents tend to do when en masse, we talked about our children - their quirks, their cleverness, the lengths to which our love for them had driven us. We each had a boy and a girl, but in my case, the girl was older, and in her case, the boy was, by just a few years.

Image: Teece Aronin

Our daughters were classmates at school, and that was how the other mommy and I first met. She was flamboyant and loud, but in good ways - extroverted, I should have said. She was tall and sexy and could make smoking look almost as glamorous as people thought it was back in the fifties. She could also drink like a fish but didn't seem to lose control from it. I could never imagine her sick on booze, cooling her face on the bathroom tiles like a lot of people do when they've drunk too much. She seemed to take everything in stride, made everything she did look easy. And she was a loving mother, a hands-on mother, the kind of mother who makes mud pies with her kids.

Since children's parties and parent-teacher conferences were our usual conversation venues, we didn't talk often, but I enjoyed her when we did. One time she listed for me all the reasons she'd preferred to work outside the home even when her kids were babies. She said the same thing as a lot of women who work, when financially they can afford to stay home; that the adult interaction made her a better parent. Then she jokingly confessed the "real reason" and laid it smack on her daughter's playhouse doorstep: "That kid always talked way - too - damned - much."

But that was a different time and not the conversation I'd started to tell you about. This other conversation, as I said, took place on the occasion of her daughter's eighth birthday. But we weren't talking about her daughter; we were talking about her son. We were at her home, a comfortable townhouse she shared with her family. Being at her place always cheered me up because it was cluttered and chaotic even when she entertained, and she made no apologies for it. It cheered me up because when I entertained, I either compulsively bulldozed the clutter out or compulsively apologized for it to my guests. How could I get as comfortable in my skin as she was in hers, I wondered.

Anyway, there we were, the other mommy and I, grazing from the veggie plate, when she told me that when she was a girl, she used to make fun of the "short bus," the smaller buses used to transport kids with special needs to and from school.

So this is how the kids who teased, the kids who bullied might turn out, I mused. I had never met an adult with the guts to admit to that kind of behavior, but this one had, and she'd grown up to be . . . well . . . good, in a lot of ways. I don't know if she made fun of the kids themselves, the kids with special needs, I mean, or if she just joked about the bus itself, telling her friends they belonged on one and that kind of thing. I suppose it doesn't matter now.

For the life of me, I can't remember how we got onto the topic of her son's first day of kindergarten or what possessed her to tell me something so personal, but she did. She said that she stood at the curb with him, waiting for the bus, and the picture of them was so clear in my head, her standing there with him, her son, born with Down syndrome.

And she said that what looped through her mind over and over were the words: "Please God, don't let it be a short bus. Please God, don't let it be a short bus. Please God, don't let it be a short bus."

I don't remember if it turned out to be a short bus or not, but maybe that doesn't matter now either.

A Perfectly Beautiful Son

Mother's Day will be here soon, so I thought I'd reach way down deep in the memory drawer and pull something out that I wrote years ago and haven't looked at in a while.

A picture of me with my own son

A woman once told me about the day when her son, born with cerebral palsy, came into the house upset because some neighborhood kids had been bullying him. She stood with him in front of the full-length mirror she kept in her bedroom and said, "Look at yourself. That's your body and it's beautiful." 

After she told me that story, I wrote this poem for her. I'm sharing it here for all the mothers of children with disabilities. Your children are amazing, and they have made you more amazing too and probably stronger than you ever thought you could be. Happy Almost Mother's Day to all of you.

A Perfectly Beautiful Son

"I'm crippled and useless; the kids say I am."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son."

"Mommy, how can you say that when you know how I look?"

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. You look like your father. You're lucky, my pet. He's handsome and strong. Can't you see? You belong. Be proud, my beautiful son."

"My feet drag on the ground; I fall down all the time."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And when you fall down, you get right back up. You've never stayed down and I know you won't now. Get up, my beautiful son."

"My hands always shake; I spill everything."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And when your hands shake, I will hold them in mine. It will steady us both; not just you but me, too. Hold tight, my beautiful son."

"My speech comes out funny; people can't understand."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And when I hear you speak, I hear magical sounds. The words are so clear and their meanings so dear. Speak out, my beautiful son."

"People think that I'm weak, just because I'm so small."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And your heart's grown so strong, how could you be weak? To me you're so mighty, sometimes I can't speak. Stand tall, my beautiful son."

"The kids have been saying I'll wind up alone."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. You have so much to give and a great life to live. And when the day comes that a girl sees this too, I'll love her so much - but not like I love you. But I'll love her to pieces, and I'll shout to the world, 'My son's found his true love! What a perfectly beautiful girl!"