Active Shooter in the Elevator

This is a shaggy dog story.

There is no Macguffin.

There is no morale.

It is not a metaphor.

It is straight out reportage.

I was up at 5am, finally succumbing to walking the terrier, who is over 16 years, which is supposedly over 80 in human years, as she cronies her stumbling into geriatric dog hell.

The past 4 days she has moaned and whined from 12 midnight to 6 in the morning, causing me to take her for walks at Midnight, then back home by 12:30 am with no productive results, then more moaning at 12:45, and we go back out walking until 1:45 am.

She is a harsh mistress. I am allowed intermittent naps, full of rich dream life.

The next night, I shut the bedroom door at 12, with the proviso that she could wander the apartment to her senior heart’s content.

I was exhausted and required taking the reins of my own health. You need to understand that as much as I try to help her, she offers no thanks.

She walks haltingly to the elevator. I have abandoned her leash, except when we are near intersections, or when she traverses known rough sidewalks, somehow finding mysterious holes in ground fight next to fences, which is next to the 12 foot drop to a neighbour’s yard.

I have no hero complex here. My hands in this game is to merely balance my intolerance and middle aged anger issues, with my soft gooey centre.

Maisy has no morality. She scatters remains of “fairy villages” near the base of the neighbour’s large trees, placed there by the local children. She plods through them like she is Dogzilla, pushing aside the little houses and tables and chairs, just as she does in the apartment when she walks over her water dish, flooding the entire dining area.

Sometimes she just stops in the elevator. She is in her diaper, which is a necessity for public areas for the betterment of public health. I witness her back legs splaying, as she makes the motions to squat and defecate in her diaper in the elevator, perhaps to urinate even more in the already overloaded diaper. I pick up her hind end. Not on my watch I caution.

One minute more, and we will be outside and you can pee and poo to your hearts content, just like a real dog.

We get outside and she does none of the above, instead staring blankly off into space. What goes on in her demented doggy brain?

“I have no clue”, my own Mother’s words come back to haunt me.

“I have no clue”.

My sleep is so fragmented these days, I mean nights. Time is no longer connected. Daysheimer. Sundowners.

I am barely functioning and semi-conscious.

I give up. She has won again. She is the master of the stare down. No flinching. I have no recourse but to put the leash back on her as she stumbles into the street. Cars whip around the corner.

She has gone nowhere for a number of minutes, her little mind is frozen. Pretty vacant. Perhaps she is dreaming.

She is the dream thief, entering my dreams upon my walking. She can sort out why Donald Trump is hijacking the airplane, piloting us into a nosedive. She can train the midgets to wrestle with my demons. She can take the reins of my horse, galloping off into the sunset.

Yesterday, I took the car back to the dealership so they could fix the problem on the bumper that Michelle noticed the morning after purchase. That’s what I get for buying a car in the night, still exhausted from canine sleep deprivation. Can we just get you to step into our Finance Manager’s office….can I ask you to speak with our insurance brokers…so much signing. Initial here, check here, the most important feature for me is how the stereo sounds, yet as I was test driving with Michelle, I was not allowed to turn it up. Crank it my inner voice screams.

I am a shell of a man. A husk of my previous walking upright, backbone intact firmer self. That was supposed to be former self, but firmer self*, (another autocorrect “mistake”.) makes more sense.

On my way to the dealership, I pass by Reliable Gun, our local gun shop. They are having their annual sale. One year, they had this event on the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre.

SocialMedia was not so kind, as they deserved for their insensitivity. This year, the lineup snakes around the block. They are giving out free coffee and hotdogs. The combination of caffeine and nitrates, pig eyes and civet soaked chocolate covered coffee beans.

What? It’s not chocolate?

After dropping off the car, walk 4000 steps to my cardio rehab, I do the exercises my Japanese Drill Sergeant prescribes. She teaches me how to correctly lift a dumbbell. Again. She is always teaching me how to correctly lift the dumbbell.

Dumbbells for Dummies.

I finish up, and find an EVO, our local rent a car by the minute service. They exclusively utilize Prius. I have the misfortune of getting in one of the newer ones, with an automatic stick shift that looks a feminine vibrator. I try to manipulate the “rabbit”, while searching for the parking break release.

Where did their crafty Marie Kondo efficient minds hide it this time? I give up after about five minutes of rooting my hand around under the dash, pushing my foot into every pedal down there. I call them on the in-car phone.

“Where did you hide the parking brake?”

It is on the far left. Near the foot rest? No, not the far. Oh, you mean the little pedal that is right under my left shoe? The one that says Parking Brake? That one?

I drive myself home.

I walk the dog.

JANE STOP THIS CRAZY THING!

Later that same day, I am awakened from my nap with an invitation from my buddy Ron to see a hockey game.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

And before you change your mind, yes.

I get a call from Michelle. She has been visiting a friend at the hospital, and the announcement comes over the intercom,

“There is an Active Shooter in the Elevator.” Not even a Code White, which is hospital shorthand for Angry White Man on the loose in the hospital. No, they elevate this one to Active Shooter in the Elevator.

Not to make light of this, but does that mean she should have taken the stairs?

She goes back to the hospital room her friend is in. The door does not lock. Of course not. It is a hospital.

Active Shooter in the Elevator.

What? Are we in America?

Lucky, she is not in a hospital in the Gaza. Nothing like being bombed while visiting a friend in the hospital.

No, in North America we are civilized.

Active Shooter in the Elevator.

Somehow my shaggy dog story pales.