Young love can be a very sweet and innocent experience - that is if Walt Disney is producing the plot and you have beautiful child actors dramatizing the antics in 30 minutes or less complete with life lessons and a musical number. In reality, young love is obnoxious, obsessive melodrama that always leaves one or both (mostly both) parties acting like ridiculous idiots. No gender is particularly more guilty than the other. I have watched girls as their conversations grow louder and hair flips almost dangerous when a certain fella walks by. Of course lest I forget the giggling. God. The giggling.
I have watched boys puff out their chests and take on strides through the hallway that beg an Animal Planet voiceover about awkward mating rituals.
There are those that display their love through pain: the locker punchers, ear piercers, and fighters. I am often annoyed by the artistic Romeos that scrawl names and hearts in Sharpee all over their arms and jeans or scribble on my desks, and God forbid, the really blatant fools who add their one-true-love's name to their homework.
Then there are the love sick fools who refuse to eat in front of their crush or are too heartbroken to consume a calorie because fasting like you are Gandhi will summon the love gods of peaceful protest and send him/her running into your arms.
Last but not least, the crying. If there is one truth to all the talk about hormones, it is the underdeveloped control these little love junkies have over their emotions. I have consoled both boys and girls through mascara smearing, sob sessions where I've handed them snot rags in between their adamant swears to the Lord above that they can love nobody else. I mean seriously, imagine if we all married our childhood sweethearts?! Well, uh,wait a second...no comment.
But anyway, one perk of my job is that I get (or shall I say, deserve) a short two month break from all the infatuation nonsense when summer rolls around. When spring hits and love is in the body-odor-covered-by-cheap-cologne-filled air, summer can not come quickly enough for middle school teachers. But not this year. No. It followed me home.
Here I sit, at 4:30AM awakened by never-ending whines of my once sweet and mild-mannered 'first born' who is beside himself in love. For the past three days Gary and I have been overwhelmed with a love drunk, 100 lb, 8-year-old Great Pyrenees. At this moment he standing in front of me whining, barking and intermittently throwing his heavy paw on my leg in a pitiful teenage-like plea to let him go outside and rendezvous with the love of his life. The object of his affection is 10 lb beagle-mix mutt that showed up at our house a few weeks ago. "Sally" (as Charley has named her) has my dog in fits. He paces through the house, digging his nails into our laminate floors and frantically moving from window to window hoping to get a glimpse of his mangy Juliet . He jumps onto the window barking and beating his paws on the glass as though he was Dustin Hoffman in the The Graduate. He will do this for hours. Hours. He has not slept and has stopped eating - at any minute I expect to walk in and see 'Gunner + Sally 4-ever' written in Sharpee on his white fur that has been doused in Axe body spray. In the brief moments when he actually lies down, the entire time he pants and whimpers a constant, sad cry - I think can make out 'Sally' from his groans. Occasionally, he will let out a long sigh - sorta like that hiccup noise Charley makes when she has cried too hard and long and is finally trying to get her breath.
I can't even take him outside to pee. We normally just leash him up to the porch for a bit throughout the day, but in his aggressive struggle to get to Sally he has stripped his leash to a breaking point. When he is outside it beyond hilarious to watch the huge beast prance around the little pup trying desperately to hook up. Drunk men dancing at bars have more swagger than poor Gunner. He throws a flirty paw and smashes Sally into the ground. He jumps to mount and gets nothing but air. Meanwhile, the little floozy flops over, displaying her goodies right before she sprints just beyond his reach. I once had a female student who walked by a certain classroom daily and purposely plummeted full-on faceplant to capture the attention of her crush - now I kinda see the connection.
It must be noted that Gunner is the dog who refused, on several occasions, arranged opportunities to express his affections with female Pyrs. After a handful of failed attempts to vend Gunner's 'stud services', I wrote him off as a confirmed bachelor and was ready to sign the family up for a pride march. I mean, Gunner doesn't so much as lift an eyebrow unless he hears you pouring food in his bowl or he notices that you are not paying attention to the food you just pulled from the oven. Clearly, he has a passionate hankering for straggly, little brunettes from the other side of the tracks.
As pitiful as it all sounds, I am about to go completely mad. He has ensured our insomnia, ripped the curtains off the window, and panted until slobber pours from his mouth; my windows and floors are covered in a foamy shine.
According to the Internet, this bitch (pun intended) could hypnotize my Gunner for the next 3-4 weeks, which is basically the rest of my summer. I don't think so. I will NOT be confined to the house with a hyperactive three-year-old and a lust-crazed beast (to be clear, I'm still referring to Gunner). My house will not become some brothel for dogs. We're trailer park people, but not that level, yet.
So please - I am taking any and all efforts to save my sanity and the rest of my summer break. Stop by and pick up Sally - other than being a little promiscuous she's a real sweetheart, my dog will confirm this. Gunner is available for adoption, as well - I think my little boy has grown up and is ready to leave home. Maybe even donations to board him until this bewitching passes?
In the meantime, I can only pass along the expert advice of our favorite former game-show host, Bob Barker: Help control the pet population, have your pet spade or neutered! As for the twitterpated teenagers? The only fix we have for them is patience, Jesus and turtlenecks.
1 comment:
This is my 3rd time reading this post. Sooooo glad you're back to blogging. :) You're so hilarious.
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