Back Story: A hotdog with relish

It is one of those things that happen to me in the middle of the night, the cause of which I can never trace. Dead, dead in the water, cars backed up for miles, nothing moving: 2:00 a.m. on the Belt Parkway at the tail end of a straight-through drive from Hollywood, Florida to Long Island; 3:00 a.m. coming out of the Midtown Tunnel onto the Long Island Expressway (also known as the world’s longest parking lot) after partying in Manhattan all night and just wanting my bed; 10:30, Tuesday night on I-70 in the last hour of a ten-hour drive from New York City to Yellow Springs. We finally get off at Exit 91 and backtrack to 270, south to I-71 and over to Rte. 35 and up 72. We add an extra half-hour to our trip, not to mention the 20 minutes or so we spend blocked in the extreme left lane until we are able to take advantage of two quickly dissolving openings to our right. There will be nothing about it in the media the next day. But, we know they closed I-70 westbound, because there is a police car blocking the entrance when we get off.

We are in a hurry to get home. We’ve been missing Suki, who has spent four days and three nights at May’s house in Fairborn. She is 11 months old and we have never left her before. She is home now waiting for us. Well, she doesn’t know she’s waiting for us – she doesn’t know what’s happening. We in fact are the anxious ones when we hit the wall.

She is in bed when we get home. She hears us come in and there is a fuss downstairs where she sleeps. Kalson is readying her for her reunion with us. He releases her. She flies up the stairs dressed like a hotdog with mustard and relish in the new Halloween costume May has bought her. Her whole rear-end is wagging. She is so excited that, as she plants sweet kisses all over our faces, she can no longer hold her water. There is a trail of happy pee on the carpet from the top of the stairs into the kitchen where she has followed us. We always forgive happy pee.

I used to wonder about people and their dogs.

-vh