Tracy's Latest Story
This is a story I wrote with the intent of reading it at Ken Babbs’ annual 4th of July barbecue; however, circumstances arose that prevented me from making it down there this year. But I still think it’s a good story, and so here it is…
Homeless Without Dogs (Written & copyrighted by Tracy McCall 7/08)
This is a story I wrote about one of my many adventures on public transportation in Portland, Oregon, the people who ride on it, and the different views of the world that they share whether you want to hear about them or not.
The other day I committed an astoundingly evil sin on my way home on the bus. I even surprised myself with this one. Here’s what happened…
I’m sitting and minding my own business when a woman with a baby gets on the bus and sits in the seat in front of me. The woman is actually talking in both English and French to the baby and this draws immediate and friendly inquiries from the other passengers.
This made me wonder why it is that Americans don’t seem to mind a white woman talking French on the bus, but if any woman of any other race or nationality gets on the bus and talks in her own native language everybody thinks that’s rude.
Anyway, from the other passenger’s inquiries I learned that this woman is teaching all her children to be bi-lingual. One child of hers, she claimed, could even speak Korean. It was during the course of all this conversation that the woman asked the baby “Do you see a doggy?” as she pointed out the window.
Well that’s all it took and now the baby is yelling “DOGGY!!!” every 30 seconds for the next 68 blocks. This is where things get interesting…
As we’re approaching the Burnside Bridge she tells her baby “I’m sure there’ll be doggies on the bridge up here!”
She was of course referring to the homeless people that so frequently camp out on the sidewalk of the bridge, and always seem to have a pet dog or two around with them.
Well as we passed the homeless on the bridge it soon became clear that none of them had a dog. This led the woman to actually say, out loud to her baby, “Gee I was sure we would see some doggies on the bridge. Usually you see them laying there on the sidewalk with their families.”
It’s important to note here that the woman was not the least bit disappointed by the sight of homeless people camping out on the bridge. She was actually disappointed that none of the homeless people had a dog.
And as for the phrase “Usually you see them laying there on the sidewalk with their families”, I imagined two homeless dogs sitting around and saying to each other “Hey, let’s get our families and go lay on the hot burning sidewalk on the bridge, where we can enjoy the sights and sounds of rush hour traffic, exhaust fumes, and road debris.”
I’m neither Democrat nor Republican, so that concept makes absolutely no sense to me.
I thought to myself “That’s the problem with homeless people; they never live up to the public’s unrealistic expectations!”
I realized immediately that this situation had to be diffused, and so during the course of observing the baby attaching his blueberry flavored sucker to the sleeve of his mother’s really nice summer dress and drooling blue slobber on her shoulder, and yelling “DOGGY!!!” every 30 seconds I reasoned that the one sure-fire way to make a baby shut up is to appeal to their short attention span by showing them something they’re never seen before.
And so, as the baby looked at me over his mother’s blue sticky shoulder and yelled “DOGGY!!!” at me, I extended my hand to just behind the mother’s right ear and flipped off the baby.
This had the immediate desired effect because the baby immediately began to try to mimic my hand gesture. Ah, the sight of a young baby trying new things… It just sort of gets you right here.
The mother, oblivious to her young son’s newfound knowledge, removed the sucker from her dress and tried to give it back to the baby, but the baby was busy reaching beyond his mother’s peripheral vision and was hard at practice trying desperately to clench his fingers into a fist without bending the middle finger. To the baby’s credit, he learns fast.
The mother, with no place to put the wet sticky sucker simply tossed it out the window where, much to my amazement, it stuck to the back of the head of a bald guy driving a convertible.
She then pulled the baby off of her blue sticky shoulder and held him out in front of her and said “You see what happens when you don’t hold on to your sucker?”
And with that the baby extended his hand out to within two inches of his mother’s face and very slowly and methodically enabled his young innocent brain to send the signals to the hand to flex and relax all the right muscles at just the right time and in just the right sequence to flip off his mother.
Unfortunately, his hand was so close her face that she actually thought the baby was attempting to pick her nose, and so she simply pulled his hand down and away from her face, and placed him back on her blue sticky shoulder, facing me again, so that he could go back to practicing this wonderful new talent without interruption.
Well needless to say I didn’t hear anything more about doggies for the rest of the bus ride, and as I approached my stop and rang the bell I gave the still practicing baby one more demonstration. It’s always good to reinforce a child’s education through practice and tutoring.
I knew as I stepped off the bus that the kid would do just fine. It was simply a matter of time until he flipped his mother off again, only when she was far enough away to actually see what he was doing.
According to the mother, the baby’s father is a successful architect, and it’s only a matter of time once the mother figures out what her baby is doing that she’s going to accuse the father of teaching his son rude and improper hand gestures in the name of some sort of primitive male bonding ritual. And that father is going to have some ‘splaining to do.
But theirs is a world of perfection, where the wife of a successful architect can afford to ride the bus while carrying her baby in her arms because she didn’t have one of those nifty strollers. And some day in their perfect world… There will be no more homeless without dogs.
THE END
Tracy (Never Had A Nickname) McCall
Head Writer, Singer, Song Writer,
And Attorney at Log
Paulie Family Productions
Homeless Without Dogs (Written & copyrighted by Tracy McCall 7/08)
This is a story I wrote about one of my many adventures on public transportation in Portland, Oregon, the people who ride on it, and the different views of the world that they share whether you want to hear about them or not.
The other day I committed an astoundingly evil sin on my way home on the bus. I even surprised myself with this one. Here’s what happened…
I’m sitting and minding my own business when a woman with a baby gets on the bus and sits in the seat in front of me. The woman is actually talking in both English and French to the baby and this draws immediate and friendly inquiries from the other passengers.
This made me wonder why it is that Americans don’t seem to mind a white woman talking French on the bus, but if any woman of any other race or nationality gets on the bus and talks in her own native language everybody thinks that’s rude.
Anyway, from the other passenger’s inquiries I learned that this woman is teaching all her children to be bi-lingual. One child of hers, she claimed, could even speak Korean. It was during the course of all this conversation that the woman asked the baby “Do you see a doggy?” as she pointed out the window.
Well that’s all it took and now the baby is yelling “DOGGY!!!” every 30 seconds for the next 68 blocks. This is where things get interesting…
As we’re approaching the Burnside Bridge she tells her baby “I’m sure there’ll be doggies on the bridge up here!”
She was of course referring to the homeless people that so frequently camp out on the sidewalk of the bridge, and always seem to have a pet dog or two around with them.
Well as we passed the homeless on the bridge it soon became clear that none of them had a dog. This led the woman to actually say, out loud to her baby, “Gee I was sure we would see some doggies on the bridge. Usually you see them laying there on the sidewalk with their families.”
It’s important to note here that the woman was not the least bit disappointed by the sight of homeless people camping out on the bridge. She was actually disappointed that none of the homeless people had a dog.
And as for the phrase “Usually you see them laying there on the sidewalk with their families”, I imagined two homeless dogs sitting around and saying to each other “Hey, let’s get our families and go lay on the hot burning sidewalk on the bridge, where we can enjoy the sights and sounds of rush hour traffic, exhaust fumes, and road debris.”
I’m neither Democrat nor Republican, so that concept makes absolutely no sense to me.
I thought to myself “That’s the problem with homeless people; they never live up to the public’s unrealistic expectations!”
I realized immediately that this situation had to be diffused, and so during the course of observing the baby attaching his blueberry flavored sucker to the sleeve of his mother’s really nice summer dress and drooling blue slobber on her shoulder, and yelling “DOGGY!!!” every 30 seconds I reasoned that the one sure-fire way to make a baby shut up is to appeal to their short attention span by showing them something they’re never seen before.
And so, as the baby looked at me over his mother’s blue sticky shoulder and yelled “DOGGY!!!” at me, I extended my hand to just behind the mother’s right ear and flipped off the baby.
This had the immediate desired effect because the baby immediately began to try to mimic my hand gesture. Ah, the sight of a young baby trying new things… It just sort of gets you right here.
The mother, oblivious to her young son’s newfound knowledge, removed the sucker from her dress and tried to give it back to the baby, but the baby was busy reaching beyond his mother’s peripheral vision and was hard at practice trying desperately to clench his fingers into a fist without bending the middle finger. To the baby’s credit, he learns fast.
The mother, with no place to put the wet sticky sucker simply tossed it out the window where, much to my amazement, it stuck to the back of the head of a bald guy driving a convertible.
She then pulled the baby off of her blue sticky shoulder and held him out in front of her and said “You see what happens when you don’t hold on to your sucker?”
And with that the baby extended his hand out to within two inches of his mother’s face and very slowly and methodically enabled his young innocent brain to send the signals to the hand to flex and relax all the right muscles at just the right time and in just the right sequence to flip off his mother.
Unfortunately, his hand was so close her face that she actually thought the baby was attempting to pick her nose, and so she simply pulled his hand down and away from her face, and placed him back on her blue sticky shoulder, facing me again, so that he could go back to practicing this wonderful new talent without interruption.
Well needless to say I didn’t hear anything more about doggies for the rest of the bus ride, and as I approached my stop and rang the bell I gave the still practicing baby one more demonstration. It’s always good to reinforce a child’s education through practice and tutoring.
I knew as I stepped off the bus that the kid would do just fine. It was simply a matter of time until he flipped his mother off again, only when she was far enough away to actually see what he was doing.
According to the mother, the baby’s father is a successful architect, and it’s only a matter of time once the mother figures out what her baby is doing that she’s going to accuse the father of teaching his son rude and improper hand gestures in the name of some sort of primitive male bonding ritual. And that father is going to have some ‘splaining to do.
But theirs is a world of perfection, where the wife of a successful architect can afford to ride the bus while carrying her baby in her arms because she didn’t have one of those nifty strollers. And some day in their perfect world… There will be no more homeless without dogs.
THE END
Tracy (Never Had A Nickname) McCall
Head Writer, Singer, Song Writer,
And Attorney at Log
Paulie Family Productions
posted by The Paulie Family at 12:08 PM
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