What I've learned from a dog

My daughter said that I had a nightmare the night before last and that she had to wake me up in the middle of the night. There getting to be so frequent that now I don’t even remember when she comes into my room. I must have been sleeping on my left side. If I want a freightless nights sleep I have to sleep on my right. Life is so funny, I sleep on the right but when I’m awake I lean to the left.

Last night I did not sleep half the night for some reason or another. Walking in the morning was on my mind as I tossed around. I needed to sleep so that I could get up early enough to walk and be home before my daughter left for work. I finely fell asleep around 4 am and woke with the birds at exactly 5:20.

The first problem was, none of the clothes were assembled like they usually were. All my walking shorts were still in the dryer. I ran down stairs, piled them into the basket, lugged them up the stairs, hastily dressed, unleashed Max and was out the door 10 minutes later then normal.

The second problem was someone had switched off Max’s collar. Alika had left Max’s choker on him the day before and I thought he still had it on so I quickly snapped on his leash and was down the street before I realized he was just wearing his fancy one.

No time, I had to keep moving while all the while I envisioned Max doing his twisting and pulling as we passed other dogs. Angrily, I doubled the leash around him and just kept going.

Four blocks out now and it is the spot where Max drops his load. Only now he has decided that he wants to play Ferdinand and just smell the flowers. Tick, tick, tick. I did not have enough control without his choke chain. I could not pull his collar up high nor could I do the fancy snap that always got his attention.

“Your not the pack leader, your not the pack leader.’ I was taunted by those words from the kids. Max was now pulling me over every other minute and we were getting no where. My peaceful walk, my chance to mull things over in my head never happened. In fact it has never happened since I started walking him. My frustration and stress got the best of me. I pulled him to me and dragged him back home never finishing or for that matter hardly starting my walk.

This anger gets the best of me at times and it is at these times I just want to run away. Like when I was a kid. Only then I would just hide in the closet to see if anyone would miss me. Now if I hid in the closet it would only cause problems for my daughter who would have to deal with it and she has enough stress.

Getting home, I fed Max and walked back to the front to cool off. I hoped that by watering the plants I could calm down but I was greeted by a big green, snarled hose that had beenå thrown off to the side. My granddaughter had washed her car! Now I was really mad and I was spitting nickels. After I untangled, flipped all the kinks, and stretched the hose to its destination I started to water.

My dog George came to mind. I could see me walking to kindergarten and George doing his serpentine walk in front of me sniffing all of the bugs and plants as he went. I’ve never felt that he had a grand, or even good life as my pet. He didn’t sleep in the house, he never went anywhere with the family and he ate mostly table scraps.

His days were spent dodging the dogcatcher. And that is what I thought about while I drenched the roses. George was my Jerry Seinfeld. No matter what went wrong he would come out of hiding and go about his business. His uncanny awareness of the dogcatcher was legendary no matter how they would stalk him they could never catch him.

His life was full of upsets and yet he was always there, sniffing in front of me, showing up after school every single day to walk me back home. And he was always a happy dog.

You know, I never dream about George. He was the best part of the first 15 years of my life. Why do I let little things bother me, why do I invite the terrors of my life into my dreams? Maybe I have to hide behind a bush when the dogcatcher, that is my anger, starts to thread its way into my life. Sit and smell the flowers in those bushes and then come back out when the coast is clear and serpentine, serpentine, my way through the rest of the day.å

Soothing the Angry Soul

Sticks and stones may break your bones but anger can kill your spirit. Anger was served every night for dinner. It made me a skinny little girl with a bad attitude.

When you eat so much anger it will come back up when you’re not able to digest it. Mine came up at school. Mr. Silverman, the vice principal of Farragut Elementary in San Francisco, was always dealing with it.

He patrolled the school ground every day. Kids always surrounded him. Though I spent a lot of time in his office being disciplined, when he was on the playground I too enjoyed his company. In his hat and trench coat, clasping a brass bell, he was the most popular figure at recess.

In school I was always fighting with one child or another. I especially disliked the kids whose parents came to Open House. They would look at their child’s work sitting neatly on the desk and act so proud of what their child had accomplished.

Standing alone at my desk, I would look at my pile of half finished, hurriedly put together projects and messy work. My family was not there to look at anything I did. My parents were at home watching TV, to busy to even see how I was doing in school.

My friend’s parents would stop and look at my folder, though they were being kind, it was not the same as having your own parents there to see your things. In my heart I felt I was not worth the time, and that no one really cared about me.

One morning while walking with a friend to school, she mentioned that her parents were taking her to the circus. She asked if I wanted to go? What a question. Sure I wanted to go, I would have given anything to go. But, I knew that I would never go. My parent’s wouldn’t have given me the money.

Why bring up the subject at dinner, it would just start another fight. So I said to my friend, “Who wants to go to a stupid circus, I’ve got other things to do.” And I didn’t talk about it anymore.

That day I arrived at school extra mad and just looking for trouble. I exchanged angry words here and there and told everyone how stupid I thought the circus was. No one wanted to fight with me. When the bell rang I stomped off to class.

I settled into my seat and got my paper and pencil out. The school messenger came into our room and handed the teacher a note. The teacher turned to me and said, “Karen you need to go to Mr. Silverman's office.”

As I made the dreaded walk down the hall, my heart started pounding as I got nearer to Mr. Silverman's door. Someone must have complained about me again.

He was never an angry man. He was soft spoken and genuinely kind, but I was still afraid. It was so unusual to deal with a person who never raised his voice. I felt that one day he would have to loose his temper and this could be the day.

I stood in his doorway with my hair hanging in my face, my ill-fitting dress all disheveled and my fist clinched. He looked at me with a smile. He asked me to come in. I entered and stood in front of his desk.

He said, “Karen, I have this extra ticket to the circus. Would you like to have it?”

I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say. Why was he giving it to me? There were so many kids who were nicer then me, who weren’t always in trouble.

I just said, ”Really?”

He thought that I would enjoy it and if I could find a way to get there I could have the ticket. Reassuring him that I could get a ride, I thanked him and hurried back to class.

When I got back to my seat, I told my friend that I wanted to go to the circus with her on Saturday as I was just given a ticket by Mr. Silverman. Of course she reminded me of what I had said about the circus being stupid. I brightly covered up what I had said with the excuse that I was just kidding.

I was thrilled to have the ticket. But what was to influence the rest of my life was the fact that someone cared. Someone was looking at my work and taking an interest in what I was doing. Someone felt that I was a worthwhile being and that they cared about me even with my flaws. That one act of kindness removed a lot of the anger from me.

Mr. Silverman's thoughtfulness has made me understand how important praise, recognition and kindness is to a troubled child. Good children who don’t have to battle demons seem to come by rewards and praise easily.

When children are angry, they aren’t able to position themselves for rewards or praise. Maybe, like me, they don’t think they have any self worth.

As an adult, when volunteering with young children to help them with reading I try to aim for the troubled one. The very first thing on my agenda is to look for what things I can do to make that child feel that they are special and that someone cares. And I have seen it work.

Mr. Silverman knew that this was the way to reach out to neglected children and that everyone needs to be special and cared for. Now, I use that lesson too. Maybe sticks and stones may break your bones but kindness soothes those little souls.

Because I can!

I went to the "Open Market" this morning for the second time. My daughter couldn't make it so she asked me to pick up some of the Tuba Rose stems that she had picked up last week for $1.00 dollar a stem.

That was the first place I stopped at, as they go out quickly. They were sitting in a bucket without water in the morning sun and they were not as nice as last weeks. But I knew Chris would want them so I picked the best I could find.

The lady next to me asked the guy, "How Much?" I was ready to say to her $1.00 a stem when he said, "they are $1.25 a stem." I looked the guy in the eyes and asked him did it cost him more gas to get them here then last week? he just laughed and said, "No Auntie (there's that Auntie again) it's Memorial Day" as though paying a higher price for the flowers honored the Vets!

Needless to say I was upset. I continued to meander through the stalls to buy the fruits and vegetables. As I got to the sellers that I had patronized the week before I had notice that everything had gone up. I checked other stalls and all of the prices had gone up. I am not sure what the reason was. The holiday? Maybe you had to cook more food? The cost of gas to get to the market? Or was it "hey everyone else is doing it so why not?"

There is not a person I have talked to that is not upset with the price of Gas nor are they happy with the conglomerate's that are responsible for it. They complain about how we are being taken advantage of and that they are only getting rich off of the little people because they have us over a barrel.

But after my trip through the market I began to wonder. Do we do it to ourselves? These are little farmers and sellers, they are not a monopoly, and yet they are taking advantage like the big guys. If these people who bring there products to be sold who maybe traveled 10 miles to get it there as there are lots of farms around Kunia or maybe they did come further away so they may have to make a 50 mile round trip at the most and that would not be very many of them, are they passing the price of gas off on us? The prices ranged from 19¢ on the dollar to doubling the price of the week before.

Or is it in all man to be selfish and stick it to his fellow man because he can? What is going on with people? We complain and complain about the big guys but can't see what we ourselves do to our neighbors.

We see it happen time and again. The holidays are a very good example. Christmas being the biggest one. Thanks to commercialism Christmas has lost that specialness to me. I can't be excited about a holiday that starts in July and by the time Christmas arrives I am so sick of all of the advertisements, plastic globe blown snow on a fat, red cheeked, non personal Santa and "buy this buy that," being shoved in my face that I am ready to take the tree down before the day even arrives.

But the cost of flowers going up because the retailer knows that you will want to lay the flowers on the grave of someone who has sacrificed their life so that this retailer can do just such a thing turns my stomach. And to say it with such glee?

The ancient Hawaiians did not like peddlers. They looked down on them with such disdain as they felt if you had extra of anything you gave it to others who did not have. I can't imagine what they would feel if they could see what "peddlers" do today.

I worry, times are bad and in the back of my mind I think we need to all pull together during these days but now I am worried because I don't think it will be possible.

And yet, I bought the bedraggled flowers for the asking price, paid the extra 19¢ a pound on the papaya, the extra dollar on the Okinawan Potatoes. What choice did I have. It's the market or the stores who charge even more.

But I will put my feelings about gouge thy neighbor out there and try to tell as many people as will listen. Even if my daughter, (who thankfully was not with me this morning when I questioned the flower seller), gets upset when I speak out. It may get me in trouble one day but just as the flower seller can gouge prices in the memory of a fallen solder I can speak out due to their sacrifices, and this I will do because, I Can!