on second thought...

...maybe I'm just a bit evil.

My father was reminding me today of this fact when he dredged up a long-repressed skeleton from the family closet--our secret guilt, about which we still nervously chuckle today.

It had to do with a horrible dog we'd once had...and what finally became of it. To be fair to us, it wasn't really our fault we ended up with this dog. My mom had had a friend at work who had a golden retriever, which she claimed (how reluctantly) they were unable to keep because their house was too small, yada yada.

And so, rather than let the dog be taken to the pound, my soft-hearted mother brought her home. And that dog was just a horror. She rapidly filled the back yard with small mounds of poo; she humped the leg of every person who dared into the backyard. Nevermind that she was a girl--she was confused about that. She had the worst habits of both male and female dogs combined, and none of the good qualities at all. She was constantly jumping into the pool, spreading mud and urinating with abandon. She smelled bad and had some sort of icky skin infection on her back. She drooled constantly. She was stupid.

We'd gaze out the window out her from the safety of the kitchen, while she bounced up and down outside. That dog could leap five feet straight up in the air. Up and down. Up and down.

It never stopped.

The lady who pawned this dog off on us refused (how reluctantly!) to take her back. "We just can't," she said, sadly but firmly.

The twit.

So this went on. We stopped using the back yard after a while. There was no way anyone was getting in that pool. We had daily conversations about what to do. We wanted our lives back.

But one day the gods smiled upon us. I came home from school first that day and peeped through the kitchen window. No dog.

I shrugged it off. Certainly I wasn't about to go out looking for her.

But she didn't come home that whole afternoon.

And finally, that evening, around dinnertime, there was a knock on the door. It was a little boy from down the street. Our dog had jumped the fence, he said. It had gone charging up the hill after some kids and dashed off. The little boy hadn't been able to retrieve her for us, though he'd tried. And the worst thing? The dog-catcher had been seen lurking in the neighborhood, too.

It was almost certain to have gotten her.

"Well, I suppose we'll have to go down to the pound and get her out," my mom said, discouraged.

There was a brief silence.

"We don't have to," said my dad.

And that was that--no more dog. It was a gift from the gods.

And we lived happily ever after.

Was that evil?