Will’s Thoughts – Age Does Funny Things To People.
Age changes us. Take Minnie Changes and I. When we first met, she’d all but curled into a fetal position and shut out the world. She was introverted, shy, and a reclusive person who was sick of all the pain people inflicted on each other. I, on the other hand, drank too much, talked too much, and had the social conscience of a politician. She cried at the drop of a hat, I laughed at the tragedies of mankind. She was afraid of mice, I gave a one fingered salute up Death’s nose. She was constantly cold, I was constantly hot. She liked to sleep until after noon, I woke the sun up every morning. ‘They’ say that opposites attract, and there wasn’t any doubt we were attracted to each other. I was drawn to her like a moth to a lamplight. But, age changes us.
‘They’ also say that we will become a product of our environment, and in our world, that translated to our own version of role reversals like the movie, ‘Freaky Friday’. Now, I ain’t real sure when it started, and neither is she, but somewhere along the line I became more ‘sensitive’ (I now excuse myself after loudly releasing gas), and she went from shrieking and clinging to the ceiling, when she saw a spider, to the ‘Exterminator’ (well, at least calmly pointing out the fact there is a spider, indicating insect termination on my part, which I have come to realize, better occur). Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like she went from little orphan Annie to Rambo overnight, or I suddenly could not see through a scope because of my tears. It was a gradual process of aging, kind of like the size of my behind.
As my age grew, beer was replaced by tea, rousing nights of nightclubbing turned into sequestered sequences of our favorite television programs, and fast food became optional. Decades of moral decay succumbed to sense, and anger crumbled before emotional elegance. Then came a period of confrontation in our relationship, when the honeymoon was over, and the battle of wills began in earnest. She was right determined to ‘train’ me proper, and I was at the age when I was right determined not to let her. Oh, I was wise to her womanly wiles, and was dead set that nobody was making this dog jump through hoops at any age. It was a standoff. Me, standing there with the macho self-righteousness of a half-snapped redneck, and her beckoning me into the ring with tempting ‘treats’.
The next bloody thing that I know, I needing kleenex when I’m watching Extreme Home Makeover, and she’s sarcastically asking me if I ‘need a hug’. It was just about this time that age brought about ‘another’ change, and soon the ‘human furnace’ was struggling to watch TV through frost on his eyebrows, as Pele, the hottest goddess of them all, stuck her head in the freezer. Soon my protruding bald beer belly was cocooned inside a parka and mukluks, to protect myself against frostbite in our living room during the summer. Since we have become a couple, I have learned to walk upright, bark on cue, and to care. She’s learned to care less, make hoops look like treats, and is now trying to train me to clean my litter box. I wish her luck, because this here old Tom cat is all done learning them new tricks.
Will’s thoughts prove that everybody has opinions, but he has way more than he should. From dogs that won’t stop barking, to the antics of his spouse, ‘Crazy Lady’, Will’s Thoughts will make you smile.
