[LEMONS] 5.10.2002
Seven Songs and a Confession V
Remember: they aren't forever, just for now.- minutemen: felt like a gringo
- Bootsy Collins: What so Never the Dance (Geoff: word)
- Rancid: Roots Radical (which appears on one of the most under-rated albums of the 90s, imo)
- Primus: Jerry was a Racecar Driver
- The Specials: Message to You Rudy
- Yo La Tengo: Oklahoma, USA
- Pizzicato Five: Baby Love Child
When I was a very little kid I adopted a stray dog, a poodle-mix mutt. I named her "Fifi," because, you know, that's what I thought you named poodles. My dad was out of town when I got the dog, and when he got back (from France no less) he put the smack down on the name "Fifi." But to his credit, he let me keep the dog, who became "curly" from that day forward. Years went by. Curly became my closest friend and companion--I was an only child, and as I've mentioned before, a solitary one at that. We did everything together. But then when I was 12, we got as new dog, a labrador we named Spot (we were really original with the dog names...). Spot could fetch and swim and wrestle with me. She was a respectable dog--big and beefy and purebred. Curly, who by now was old and not so much fun anymore, fell out faavor. She had gone blind, and perpetually smelled bad. And I became cruel to her. Although she was blind, she still knew her way around the house. But I used to pick her up and spin her around, disorienting her. Then I'd put her down and laugh as she wandered around bumping into things, trying to get her bearings. I would leave her in while I went out to play with Spot. I ignored my old dog. Worse, I was awful to her, I would tell her to get away, I wouldn't pet her, I just totally wrote her off. And she just got older and more decrepit. She eventually started to shit and piss all over the house, and my dad started putting her outside in this kennel during the day while my folks worked and I was at school.
One day when I was about 14, I came home from school with my friend Andy, and we went out back in the yard. It was a blistering hot Alabama day. Flies were buzzing all around the kennel. We walked over to see why. Curly was lying there dead, with her swollen tongue protuding out of her open mouth. Her eyeswere fixed open. In her darkness, she had stumbled into her water bowl and knocked it over. The heat killed her. I immediately called my mom, who came rushing home, crying. I had been too chickenshit to deal with Curly, and left her in the kennel, covered in flies, for my mom to take care of. My mom called my dad, who told me I should have called him and not her. Like a child, I yelled at him, and told him it was his fault (which it was not) for forcing her outside. We buried her in the yard.
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