Things What I Wrote 4: Double Doggies

Originally written September 29th 1997. And spruced up some today to make the jokes even more better.

No matter how hard life is, there will always be someone worse off than you. There is a place on this earth where people are locked in confined spaces, with barely enough room to stand up straight. Where these people are exposed to extremes of heat and light, and shaken around until they're ready to confess to almost anything.

This is called British Rail.

Mike Harding tells that joke better than I do, but it seems kind of appropriate. Life when you're young is a bit like the aforementioned British Rail. While being driven from place to place by a chauffeur - albeit in a baby buggy - sounds nice, it's often not all it's cracked up to be.

When you're small, everything is so much bigger. And no things could possibly have been larger than the insane evil dog who troubled me one afternoon. I must have been about three at the time, possibly younger. I'm not sure where I was - the miracle of baby buggies mean that I didn't get there by myself, all I had to do was to remain seated and wait for the world to revolve around me. I think it was a park, or something. It certainly had a nice swimming pool nearby.

Anyway, before too long, my big day out was enhanced still further by the opportunity to have some ice-cream. I indicated to my escort that I desired an ice cream. A big one.

It was a very good ice cream, actually. Do you remember the magical freezers with big tubs of all different flavours of ice cream? A wafer cone and a scoop of your chosen flavour (in my case, mint choc chip) was all any young boy needed to be happy. But on this day, I was treated to one of those special double cones, which I haven't seen for ages, so I had two scoops of ice cream, side by side. Truly, I was king for a day, and still too young to appreciate the comedy that I could have found by pointing out my side-by-side scoops of ice cream and saying "Hey! This look like boobs!". I was only three, after all.

I was as happy as Larry. If legends are correct, Larry, whoever he is, is just about as happy as it's possible to be. And so it was with me, about to take my first lick when in bounded some huge, ferocious, snarling devil dog. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a pit bull or anything dangerous like that, but when you're three, any reasonably sized dog is huge and ferocious when it's not licking your face or letting you pat it.

But this dog was in no mood for being cute. It saw my super deluxe ice cream, with two scoops. And it wanted it. What did it do? What could it do? It did the only thing a dog can do. It started barking at me. Loudly.

This troubled me, a three year old with a fine double scooper ice cream. And when you're that age, there's only so many ways you can handle a situation like that. I did the only thing a boy in my position could do. I immediately started crying.

The fearsome ten-foot dog didn't like the noise I was making too much, but it still wanted my ice cream, and continued to indicate this desire by barking at me still further. Well, I was having none of that. While manfully fighting off this dog by sobbing my eyes out, I ensured that my ice cream was safely out of harms way - I steadfastly held it above my head. It was not having my ice cream.

On and on the dog barked, louder and louder were my cries. Until, somehow, this impasse was cleared up by the reckless owners of the noisy dog and my mumsie. Before long everything was alright again, and the dog was gone. It's funny how quickly things happen when you're young.

With the dog out of the way, I think I got two licks out of my super special ice cream before... I dropped it. And oh how I cried again! Protecting your ice cream from a dog is one thing, but dropping it is quite another. The moment a food product hits the floor, it's officially out of play. No more ice cream for you, young man.

Mumsie took me home and I watched an episode of Paddington before I went to bed. After all, I'd had a big day.

Events like this are what dangerous criminals are made of. Many a law court is faced with the miscreant who has gone mad, broken into a pet shop and plucked the feathers off all the budgies. What are events like this traced back to? "I dropped my special ice-cream!!", pleads the defendant. Scarred for life.

I'm slightly better mentally balanced than that, though. But before this unhappy incident does any more damage and turns me into a nutcase, I need to put this right. The next time I find an ice-cream stand that does those special double cones, a double mint choc chip will be mine.

I just hope there are no dogs around. It could destroy a lesser man.