So let me tell you all a little bit about this friend of mine. Greatest guy in the world. Do anything for ya. Travel to the ends of the earth to help a friend. Just can’t seem to remember too well.
So the wife and I were off to Louisville this past weekend to celebrate her sister’s 30th birthday. I love venturing to ‘the Ville’ as any opportunity to set foot out of Calloway County is a wondrous respite from the abundance of ineptitude plaguing said county. The only difficulty with these jaunts is that we parent not only the nine month old wunderkind, but also a 3 year old dog and a 2 year old cat. The dog’s an outside aminal (yes, that’s how we say it in my family), too lumbersome to be allowed free reign of the indoors, and the cat…. Well, the cat should be an outsidey-type creature, save that we opted to spare our pantlegs and had her declawed at a young age. (Stupid us.) However, she dislikes being cooped up in the hizzie all day and scampers to freedom at every opportunity, only to whine incessantly for sanctuary once she remembers how much outside sucks. So she falls under the indoor-outdoor alien hybrid class of evils. At any rate, we long ago realized toting all 5 of us creatures across the country was an exercise in self-loathing, so we always have a friend feed and water them while we’re gone. Now, this is not an overly exuberant task, nor is our pool of suckers friends extraordinarily shallow. So finding volunteers is never a terrible ordeal. Usually by the second phone call, a worthy candidate steps forth. This time, the ready recruit was Scootter.
Now, Scootter’s my best friend. He and I have been pals since pals there were. Drinking buddy. Fraternity brother. Former roommate. Groomsman. Present at the birth of my son. Thick and thin, true to the end. Scootter’s the kind of pal everybody should have. Kind of like Jimmy Olsen to my Clark Kent. Or maybe he’s Clark and I’m Jimmy. I dunno. The point is, he’s the kind of bud that when he comes to you topless, razor in hand, and asks you to shave the birthmark on his back that’s shaped like Australia so that in the off chance he gets lucky tonight she won’t reach around to dig in her nails and freak when she instead snakes a paw full of Aussie back fur, you say “Sure, guy, let’s get you laid proper.” That’s my best buddy.
That being said, he’s got the cognizant memory of a rotten whale-corpse. As we returned home from a relaxing weekend out of town, I quipped to my wife, “Man, I sure hope Scootter remembered to take care of our animals.” To which she responded, “Yeah, or we’ll have a house full of dead critters.” (No, my wife is not developmentally retarded, she was speaking colloquially.) Imagine, if you will, the astonishment we experienced upon arriving home to a defenseless, weary dog, left to wither in the heat, and a panicked, starving cat, held captive in our home with no food, water, or more importantly, LITTER BOX, for an entire weekend. Thankfully, a friend was coming to mow the lawn on Sunday and happened to water the dog (although he couldn’t be fed as his food was locked in the house) or else he very seriously might have died. As it is, the only lasting effects of the animals’ lost weekend is the pungent aroma of cat pee emanating from, oh, everywhere.
And the moral of the story, boys and girls, is this: Always double-check. Even if you’ve got Steven Hawking minding the store, it never hurts to give him a call. (Although I very seriously doubt Steven Hawking is the guy you want attempting to feed your pets.) And so, I leave you with a simple poem I wrote just moments ago to commemorate the male of the species and his innate ability to forget absolutely everything.
So raise up your glasses, ye lads and ye lasses, to the mind and its wondersome wit.
While we men may remember what to do with our member, give us anything else and we’re shit.
Thanks, Scootter. :-)
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