A couple of weeks ago, Jake went missing from our home, and we feared the worst. He turned up a couple of days later, literally (I turned on the light overlooking his designated sleeping area on my porch just on instinct that Friday morning and there he was, like nothing had ever happened). But of course the thought that came to mind was that Jake had gone off to the woods or somewhere remote to die.
Jake, just for clarification, is our dog, or really my grandpa's dog. He's been with our family (first with my uncle, then with my grandparents) for at least twenty years. I'm not sure what that amounts to in dog years, but my guess is (from the reactions of people to whom I discussed his absence from our abode) it must be pretty ancient. Jake is back at home now, but it's safe to say that his time on this planet might not run much longer.
I am great with other peoples' pets (as well as their children) for the simple fact that I'm not the primary caregiver, By and large, I can get by with a stroke to comfort here (for the pets...don't get the wrong idea, people) or a well-placed gesture to elicit laughter or a smile from the children. Anything more than that (feeding the pets or changing the diapers of the children, just to pull two examples) is asking a bit much of me. I don't do well with poop, even when it's my own.
Thing is, I feel sometimes like I'm a little detached from ordinary life, from the lives of my peers on Facebook (the ones my age or younger who already have a decade or more of experience at parenting or pet-loving). I didn't have a girlfriend in high school, not even a "pity fuck" that could've resulted in an unwanted pregnancy and thus a life of drudgery to support said child by working a bunch of dead-end jobs. Oh, I've worked the dead-end jobs, it was just my lazy ass I had to support. Compared to some of my high-school chums (not any of the ones I'm friends with on Facebook), I got off easy.
But one byproduct of this luck has been some loneliness at times, reaching out for the wrong girl when I thought I couldn't do any better. The flip side is the insecurity that sees me pass up the chance I might have with not the "right" girl, but with the "right girl right now" maybe, because I have such a stellar record behind me to suggest that when it comes to this whole love thing, I'm a bit of a fuck-up. I think this is reflected in some of the relationships I have not just with romantic interests but with simple good-old-fashioned friends. There's a distance there that I sometimes put up, to keep from getting too involved. To keep from getting hurt, perhaps.
But hurt, as I'm quite aware of now, passes. It's been a little less than a year since I got hurt bad, and I guess it would behoove me to risk getting hurt again, if only to avoid a fate worse than the one I thought I avoided by not getting it on in high school: the fate where it's just you in a room, with no one around to share the room or your life with.
Jake is back, probably not for long (like I said, he's the Methuselah of dogs), but I'll try to pay more attention to him and enjoy his company until that day he really does go off to die. Maybe between work and home and work and home, I can find time for something more again. I'm a man of means by no means, as the song goes, but I get by. Maybe it's time to stop just getting by.
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