Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure that children are essentially very fragile, stupid creatures that naturally attract harm. They have about 30958 natural predators including rocks, bodies of water, and a variety of pointy objects.
For me in particular, the odds of me keeping one alive and breathing for more than a year or two are not good enough to merit the investment. I know this because that’s how the puppies are.
Stupid, breakable and 100% my responsibility.
The other evening, we took Calvin and Theo to our friends’ pool where we foolishly convinced ourselves they could nibble on bones poolside in the sun while we frolicked. This will from here on out be known as STUPID DECISION #1.
Before we begin this journey of Awful Times together, it should stated on the record that Calvin has a problem. If you were to crossbreed a crack whore and a meth addict, you would get Calvin. Dear, sweet Calvin – as soon as he sees something that can be thrown and retrieved, it’s all over. He will continue to fetch until it is put out of sight or he is heavily sedated.
Enter Basketball.
And to nobody’s surprise, as the evening progressed, he began to teeter all too close to the water.
So two kamikaze leaps into the water later, and a few reenactments of the unsexiest real life episode of Baywatch that I have ever seen, Calvin is waterlogged yet completely unfazzed by his near death experience. And the lovefest continued.
But is that where it all stopped? OHHHHH NO.
You see, while this was all happening, Theodorus, Destroyer of Worlds, was scoping out all other means of causing trouble. This included, but was not limited to, escaping the fenced in yard and running at full force toward wilderness, coyotes and certain death; and crawling in a hole in the deck siding and galloping around the underbelly of the pool where we could neither see nor reach him.
By the sound of his jangling collar and the gleeful look on his face – completely lacing any indication of understanding that NO ONE FEEDS YOU HOMEMADE FOOD IN THE FOREST – he quite enjoyed both excursions.
That’s it though, right? That’s where it ended? OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NO!
If you’d be so kind to reference the above photo of the full pool…
When we got out of the pool, we covered it up with some thermal blanket something something and got out. But not Calvin. He decided to keep looking for the now-hidden basketball. Determined to get his last fix of the evening, he went to check the last place that the ball could possibly be…at the bottom of the pool.
He checked by launching onto the pool cover and doing his best Jesus impression.
Which in all fairness was pretty much spot on.
Once satisfied that they had made their dear dad age approximately 324 years in one evening, they slept peacefully while I reached for the Xanax and ordered dachshund-sized hamster balls off the Internet.