Cheers CapnBlueballs. I very much appreciated your comments and found them well considered and valid. Thanks again.
Humor/Satire / Barn-Boy, Where's The Baby?
Our dog, Barn-Boy (not his real name), has formed a startlingly close relationship with our as-yet-unborn child. For several months now Barn-Boy has been trying to undermine my authority as leader of our pack. He has used every weapon in his arsenal. He has jumped up into our bed and tried to kick me on to the floor while pretending to be asleep.
He knows the sleeping hours are my achilles heel. He knows I am not really in my body. Oh no. During the sleeping hours, or, as dogs call them, the horizontal hours, I go out into the universe…to many different realities all at the same time. I have little sense of self, little willpower, little resistance left in my sleeping body.
It is then that he makes his persistent attacks on my position. He knows, for example, that when he tries to push me out of the bed with all four paws, I will eventually fall onto the floor like a sack of potatoes.
And when I do, it is such a shock that I am unable to return from all the various different dream realities to mount a serious challenge. So he stays in bed….stretched out like a colonial explorer tied across an Army Ant’s nest, his eyelids shut, his tongue hanging loosely out to one side, mumbling incoherently….something about a hidden treasure buried deep within a jungle cave and guarded by a lost tribe with the heads of carnivorous insects.
I don’t have the heart to move him off the bed most nights. I try to fit in around him, like a jig-saw puzzle piece. And then I wake up in the morning looking and feeling like a gigantic pretzel with rheumatoid arthritis.
But the day-long back pains and hip joint stiffness that ensues is nothing. It is the secret language, the secret pact, that Barn-Boy and our as-yet-unborn child have established that is most worrying.
Barn-Boy is super protective now. He is like a buzz-cut ex-marines security guy now. It is clear that he is protecting our baby, even in the womb. It is like living inside a Stephen King short story. On riverside strolls he attacks everything that moves, including me.
Other dog walking people see this bizarre behaviour and give us a wide berth. I am glad of this because the urban myth about dog owners looking like their dogs is no myth at all. And most of the dogs we see along the river at Noosaville are Pekinese. They look like they have spent the best part of their lives sitting up in the rear windows of Holden Kingswoods and Commodores with their disjointed heads bobbing up and down and side to side and this, along with their unblinking eyes, makes you glad of their apprehension.
When your own dog is trying to attack you while you take them for a walk it is no good putting them on a leash and hoping for the best. The leash is designed to stop your dog from running AWAY from you. It is absolutely useless for stopping your dog from running TOWARDS you.
So I have made a new kind of leash. This leash is more of a stick than a leash. Of course the longer the stick is the more out of reach I am from Barn-Boy’s persistent attacks. So I went to a specialist sports store and bought myself a fibre-glass pole-vault pole.
I used to do pole-vault, so when it comes to shopping for them I am quite the expert. I wanted one with a reasonable flex rating and a substantial poundage tolerance. The shop assistant was only too happy to help with pole selection although their eyebrows raised significantly when I asked them to attach Barn-Boy’s dog collar to the business end.
The business end of a pole-vault pole is the part with the rubber stopper on it and it is this end that you frantically plant into a small tin box sunken into the end of the pole-vault run up when you are actually trying to use the pole-vault pole for its intended purpose.
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Pole vault itself is not that difficult…..as long as you have a complete disregard for your own personal health and safety. But there are a few things you should know before you try it.
A) you have to be able to run very fast.
B) you have to be able to run very fast while holding a 16 foot long fibreglass pole in your hands. The pole, because it is flexible, will wobble and shudder remarkably in your hands BECAUSE you are running very fast.
C) you have to be able to run very fast while holding the pole and be able to hit your run up markers at top speed at the end of your 40 metre long run up with a precision that makes NASA scientists’ heads spin.
D) When you have hit your run up markers, AND you are running at the very fastest speed you are capable of, you then have to do a long jump…..while holding the pole but yet as you are lowering the business end of it towards the sunken tin box in front of you.
To perform this long jump while you are holding the pole, and to perform it BEFORE you have made it to the tin box, is one of the stupidest things a human being can do. It makes no sense. And the human brain knows it makes no sense. But you have to do it because it is critical to getting enough height and penetration in your take off to actually be able to bend the freaking pole when you do take off.
E) while you are in the middle of this long jump of faith you have to push the pole vault pole tip into the sunken tin box. The natural human survival reflex at this point, when the tip of the pole hits the bottom of the box, is to grab onto the 16 foot long pole and hug it in to your chest as tight as you possibly can, close your eyes as tight as you can, and scream as loud as you can. But you cannot do any of this stuff…..if you do, you will die.
F) instead of clutching the pole to your chest you now have to ( at the take off point, still travelling at top speed ) PUSH THE POLE AWAY from your chest. As far and as fast as you can. You still hold on to it….but you gotta push the damn thing away out in front of you….otherwise the damn pole will not bend. And if it doesn’t bend you are in deep shit. The sheer force of the impact will break your back, snap your neck, and most likely tear your heart out. Your eyeballs WILL pop out of their sockets unless you bend the pole immediately at take off.
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Barn-Boy loves all children. He is smitten and fascinated by babies. He knows the word “baby”.
When you say: “Barn-Boy, where’s the baby?”
He looks around for a baby. If there is an actual live baby nearby he will go up to that baby and make himself known and wag his tail excitedly and lick its hand or its cheek.
If there is no actual live baby around he will go up to my darling wife and begin licking her bulging tummy. Right on the belly button. He gives the belly button a sniff or two and then licks. He has seen me singing up against my wife’s stomach and he has figured out that there is something in there.
And sometimes our little packet of wonder floating around inside her womb will push and kick back against my singing and we all get pretty excited about it. And now Barn-Boy feels that pushing and kicking as well and when he does he licks even more, his tail blurred and buzzing like a helicopter rear rotor. It is way cool.
And they have their quiet moments too. Barn-Boy lies with his ear against my darling wife’s tummy, silent, unmoving, his eyes half closed, and listening for every sound, sensing every push, every kick.
Of course not a single word has ever passed between them but every day as I watch them I feel my position as pack leader losing ground, caving in, dissintegrating in favour of one tiny unborn child and her already steadfast servant.
And being over-protective, I guess, is the first step, the fundamental step, in preparing us for the reality of raising our own defenseless offspring. We will protect them with all our might. We are ready. Barn-Boy is showing us the way. And we will use pole vault poles if we have to.
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teakrulos reviewed Version 2 -
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That was a nice, intimate story. You feel a genuine love for Barn Boy. Fun and sweet.
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MikelsCycles reviewed Version 2 -
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Cute! Its also amazing how tolerant pets will be with curious children pulling their ears and poking their eyes. You have I think probably the best placed digression I’ve ever seen, not to mention informative. I was previously completely clueless as to how pole vaulting was done, and after reading this I’ve found that there’s much more to it than meets the eye. Great post!
thisisnotanexit reviewed Version 2 -
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publishable? yes. warm-hearted, funny and written with genuine insight and enough slightly skewed humour to keep the reader effortlessly engaged. i can see this in a weekly column somewhere, or in a magazine.
it’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but i don’t think that’s what you’re going for. the gentle undercurrent of wry humour is nicely sustained, and undercut in bittersweet fashion by the fear of losing a coveted position to a dog. that’s cute, and funny too, but alludes in an offhand kind of a way to the necessary shift in relationships that occur at the birth of a first child. like it or not, the child will be loved unconditionally, which requires a rearranging of some pecking order, somewhere.
good stuff. the pole vaulting stuff is particularly good.
Water_Singer reviewed Version 2 -
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This is quite cute and funny, though I found it a little dense reading for the light-hearted subject matter. I’d suggest lightening and tightening up your word and sentence choices to get the most effect out of this piece.
CapnBlueballs reviewed Version 2 -
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Enjoyed this piece but the change of subject part-way through was distracting. Don’t misunderstand, I enjoyed your observations on the absurdity of pole vaulting, I just think you should consider expanding it and presenting it as a seperate piece. Also, since you’re obviously a talented writer, I would reconsider the phrase ‘little packet of wonder’ when refering to the unborn babe. Sounds kind of generic, evokes no imagery. Overall fun read.
TrevorSamuels reviewed Version 2 -
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Very well written, good flow, kept me interested. The characters are believable and, though there wasn’t any descriptive narrative, it really doesn’t really need any. Unique subject as well. Spelling, sentence structure, grammar and punctuation are all excellent. I can’t really critique it though, it works as written. Good job!
the_antagonist reviewed Version 2 -
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So the leash thing was great. I’d say the funniest part of the whole story. There are some kinks in the pole vault instructions that need to be worked out though. I think you should change step C, for example, and just take out the attempted joke. The other steps, particularly the last three, more than make up for lack of humor in step C. Consider it more of a set-up to a joke than the joke itself, because as it is I found it sort of rambley (not a word, I know) and unfunny. I think that’d probably just a good general rule to keep in mind. Not every paragraph has to be funny, and not laughing when there was no joke is better than not laughing when there was a joke. But the story itself was most definitely entertaining.
Jimmel104 reviewed Version 2 -
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Wonderful story and great wit, wisdom and insight.
You write with a very dry sense of humor with poignant moments sprinkled throughout.
The only part that I felt did not fit into the pace of this work was your 4th paragraph. It felt weak.
I think you can make this much better if you read through and ‘listen’ for the phrases that break your ryhthm. There are several. To keep this short I will just touch a couple as examples.
Rework your Pekinese description.
Instead of “you then have to do a long jump”: try ‘then you have…’. I think it will help the reading of that section.
“holding the pole but yet as you are lowering the business end of it towards the sunken tin box in front of you”: try ‘holding the pole while lowering the business end towards the sunken tin box bobing and weaving in front of you’
None of this is really big stuff, but it is the polish that will take it from here to the next level.
Great overall, just think some of this will make it better, but then what do I know? I can tell you that when our Lab began this with my daughter I reclaimed my dominance by banishing her to her dog bed, outside! Of course that lasted only when my wife was not looking. LOL
Well done.
stephanloy reviewed Version 2 -
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I think you may have lost track of the ball around the middle of this essay. The piece is about the dog, the owner, and the unborn child, but briefly sidetracks into pole vaulting, which really has little to do with the subject. The pole vault pole, yes, but not pole vaulting itself. That seems to be another essay. There are some genuine cute, lovable and funny aspects. Especially funny is the prospect of walking a dog that wants constantly to bite you. Especially warming is the scene of the dog licking and listening to the wife’s womb. However, there are some problems, as well. How can the speaker know what his dog is dreaming if the speaker is asleep and the dog is mumbling incoherently? Would the dog’s mumbling have to be coherent? When describing the concept of people looking like their dogs, you do not make it clear whether you are talking about the pekinese dogs, their owners, or both in your description. Also, in that same area, you speak of the dog as plural.
adamsk13 reviewed Version 2 -
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overall, i thought this was a nice piece of work. well written, cute (although im not so sure i’d call it funny…charming and whimsical, maybe.) I also think the title change was a good move. my only criticism is that some of your sentances, especially in the beginning, seem kind of awkwardly place or poorly worded. it just took me a couple read-throughs to fully get what, exactly you were trying to say…
but other than that, well done, and keep writing!
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