Stinking Dogs and School Socials

As I write different things, memories flood back and I keep notes of them in a file that I call "Letters to my Children". Someday it may form the basis for a memoirs. I found these notes from a Master Class I did with Kirsty Murray. They are a first draft only.

 

The door flew open we could read the fury on our mother’s face.

‘Get that stinking dog out of here.’

‘David let him in...’

She cut me off before I could finish. ‘He’s your dog and he’s rolled in something.’

‘Out.’ I yelled and pointed to the door she was still holding open oblivious to the swarm of blowflies that circled past her. That anger would wait.

Fido ,who had never done anything in a hurry looked back at me. He shared the same look as my mother. At the door he peered out and looked up at Mum as if to say, ‘Are you serious?’ Fido took his time, but before she could move her foot behind him and give his backside a nudge he shook. A long violent shake. Wet cow dung atomised, and bits and pieces of green and black goo speared from his black and white hide. A mist of stink landing on Mum, the door, the stove and the fridge. Everything within a metre copped it.

He might have gone to golf with mum that day, something he wasn’t welcome to do, but he always made sure he was home to greet David and I when we’d finished school. Fido was my dog and now more than ever I knew it. Mum would make sure of that.

She stormed out cursing all kinds of obscenities toward David me and the dog. She muttered about dress fittings and school socials and how she’d promised Mrs Gibb I’d go with Gwenda. That was fine, she and her brother Allen were mates. She insisted I would have to ask her to dance. Me dance, I have no rhythm or sense of timing and at thirteen I thought boys still got germs from girls. Well they did, didn’t they? Having to dance with any of the girls filled me with terror, there was no way I could do that, dancing was something different again.

But after the Fido incident, I was not in a position to refuse and at the end of it all of us had a good night.