Oh, How Cute!

My wife thinks puppies are the cutest things in the world. Whenever we’re out in public and she sees one, she just has to drop everything, walk over and pet its little head.

Wait. Did I say puppies? I meant old people. My wife really likes old people.

Unfortunately, old people sometimes don’t like my wife as much as she likes them. They get really angry and start yelling at her to stop touching them. When she does the exact opposite, and starts scratching their belly, they usually threaten to call the police.

Now, I don’t know about you, but even I think that’s pretty cute. I mean, can you imagine…an old person trying to dial the numbers on a telephone? I swear, sometimes they think they’re real people!

As you can imagine, my wife is always trying to get me to agree to adopt so she can have an old person of her own. If I ignore her she’ll usually give up and just settle for looking at AARP pictures online. But when she won’t leave it alone, I have to remind her that our lifestyle doesn’t really fit with pet ownership.

“Remember when your Gran lived here,” I’ll say. “We were at work all day and she was always so lonely. And don’t forget about all the effort it takes to train them. Just getting her into that crate each morning was such a chore…”

Mentioning the crate will tend to remind her of all the times we had to hose down the inside, and that’s the end of that conversation.

But even if she somehow convinced me adopting an old person was a good idea, I doubt we’d ever agree on what to get. She likes Japanese shorthairs because they’re quiet and easy to groom. I prefer the loyalty and long, floppy ears of the Irish settlers.

If I had one, I’d probably constantly be holding his big ears out like they were wings so that I could pretend that he was flying. “Come on Jet,” I’d say. “We’ve got to get this cargo of crossword puzzles down to Florida before free time starts at the old folks’ home.”

We’d laugh and laugh…and then I’d push him out of his wheelchair so we could wrestle around on the floor.

But like I said, that’s a dream for a different day. Right now we’ve got more important things to worry about. Like climbing the corporate ladder and that pending lawsuit Gran filed against us for that time we drove out into the country and left her in the woods. It was hard driving away with those big, sad eyes staring back at me through the rearview, but trust me, it was for her own good.

Come court date, I’m sure the state of Georgia will agree.