Sadness and Thoughts

Sad news. Some lunatic hoodlums killed my mom's dog, Oliver. I'm sorry that poor Obider, as Kaleb calls him, or Gilbert, as my dad calls him, had to go through such torture at the hands of some piece of shit morons who don't have any sense of what's right. I'll spare you the horrible details, but I'll tell you that I cried for about eight hours straight when my mom called and told me. What kept ringing through my head was, How can anybody actually do such a horrible thing to a poor, sweet beagle? How can someone hold Oliver's little squirming body in their hands and be so cruel to him? Where is it in some people that they can think it's funny or vengeful or whatever they were trying to do? It makes me wonder about this world and the savages that inhabit it. Have you read Lord of the Flies? If so, you'll understand that the pig scene, you know the one, where the kids hunt and torture the poor momma pig to death, represents the breakdown of civilization, how people can turn into savages, no better than creatures, given the wrong upbringing. Parents think it's fun nowadays to be friends with their kids; they wanna be in the scene with them instead of guiding them. When kids act up, exhibit obnoxious behavior, do dumb things, now all parents do is smirk and wag their fingers at them in mock fashion with a light, "Don't do that, Mister," then load them into the cars they bought for them and send them off to school to harass the educators. Well, that's why I quit teaching. Because of the parents. Because parents aren't raising their kids right anymore. Because parents are raising savages who go around torturing Olivers and leaving the sad mess for the loved ones to clean up.

Maybe you're thinking, "He's just a dog." Well, that word "just" is the first step toward being not-so-civilized anymore. We go around excusing ourselves with that word "just". We think, "It's just a little white lie, it's just a couple of dollars, it's just for four years, it's just a few beers, it's just this or that," and we never think about the consequences of our "justs". We never think there's a boy who was already nervous about his first day of school and who loved the dog Oliver, how he's gonna have to start his week with heartache and the images of Oliver's wounds in his memory. We don't think about the woman whose days were filled with the playfulness of a dog who just wanted to be loved, and how that woman is going to return home to an empty backyard and questions about her neighborhood. We don't think of the people who feel targeted and worried about what's gonna come next in their neighborhood. We don't think about the people who hear this news and feel disheartened and distressed at this one more letdown. We don't think that our "justs" are gonna affect anyone. We "just" don't think.

I wondered, too, how such an event could affect me so strongly. Oliver wasn't my dog, but he loved me just the same. He'd come running up to me when I'd visit home, and he'd put his paws up on me to try to get some love. When I was staking in my parents' gazebo in the backyard, Oliver kept running around to all four posts to sit in my legs while I squatted down, just so he could get some semblance of a hug, get something close to a loving embrace. Don't you see? Oliver loved everybody. He didn't care if it was the lady who reprimanded him or the man who told him to get out of the way or the kid who painted him red or the girl who had to leave him behind. He just loved us all the same, wanted to play and be held by any and all of us. I imagine he might've thought those thugs were going to play with him, and that's what kills me the most. They took that innocent paw, looked into his trusting eyes, and they killed him. It affects me so strongly, I know now, because those people had a choice, and it's the same with us. They had a choice to do what they did and they went ahead and did it, whether to show off for friends, or because Oliver was howling, or because they were high and drunk, whatever. It wasn't a natural death, or something that happened without any control over the matter. They chose to harm Oliver. I want so badly to get revenge on those killers, to make them feel the hurt that we've been feeling thinking about Oliver alone in his pain and blood. I want to post signs on their yards labeling so that everyone will know what they did. I want them to learn their lesson, and I want it to be a cruel and hurtful lesson they learn. And I guess that's exactly it; I would be no better than the people who hurt us if I were to do that. We set out on these journeys thinking only of our own thoughts, desires, proclivities. We don't think about how our words or actions hurt the other person, or dog in this case, that person who is so innocently and trustingly looking for love in our arms. We think only, "Oh, just shut up you dog," and we try our hardest to shut down and shut out the other person, because we're too caught up in ourselves to realize that we have love to give to that little dog, or that struggling man, or that lonely woman. We think only of what we want to do, how best we should go about getting things our own way, and we don't even wonder about how we are going to love that dog. Why did Oliver have to die at the hands of such cruel beasts? He didn't. None of us do. We have that choice to make sure we're not the cruel, ugly, hate-filled savages in our lives. We owe that to Oliver.