There is an old saying: “Men occasionally trip over the truth. They quickly get up, dust themselves off and pretend it never happened.” I reckon that saying was probably generated by a female.
I mention this as, just last week, Old Mate and I had a conversation about borrowing her car and I said that I never touch her seat or the mirrors as I don’t need the drama. “Liar,” she exclaimed. “You always adjust the rear vision mirror!”
I tried to explain that I was talking about the side mirrors because, for safety reasons, I needed to adjust the rear vision one.
That very night, something happened that probably supported her argument. I was about to feed my boy George who has been having some drops for a sore paw, and every day it gets a bit harder to give them to him. He usually takes the drops reluctantly, eats his dinner and we go for a walk straight after. So, this night, as I am giving the drops to him, he throws his head back and the bloody glass eyedropper part comes off the apparatus and disappears.
I had no idea where it went, but George had moved on, eating his dinner, and I am looking for the dropper on the lawn with zero luck. I am thinking: “Surely, he hasn’t swallowed it?” I couldn’t find it anywhere. I raked leaves and went through them: no luck. On hands and knees in the garden bed: no luck. I started thinking about trajectory, like on CSI on TV: no luck.
I kept looking at George, who was waiting patiently for his walk, to see if he was bleeding anywhere and thinking to the future: examining his poo in case it came out the other end. To say I was stressed was an understatement. Do I tell Old Mate? Do I take him to the vet? What do I do?
I decided to wait until morning when the light was better to figure out what to do and what bloody story to tell her if I couldn’t find it. To say I had a sleepless night would be an understatement. I eventually got up at 4.30am. The dog was fine, so out I went in the yard again. After 30 minutes, I had given up and was thinking about how to communicate what had happened. Then, like a miracle, there it was right in front of me. A gift from heaven.
It saved me from that other very good saying: “I’m not saying you are a liar. I’m just saying you are very creative with the truth.”
