It's been said before (and not just by 1980's hip hop group, Whodini), that freaks come out of night. I guess there's something about the dark, soulless streets that attracts something inside the freaks to come alive and to be merry. But for the freaks in Tucson, it's not the night that attracts them. It's downtown. There's Kenny, the guy who wears a leather vest and a headdress made out of soda can pull-tabs and stands in the corner asking people for money for medicinal marijuana. There's Jaime, the mannish woman (or womanish man, depending how you look at it) who's always buying random gifts for married women all around downtown. There's even Ms. Kitty, the lady who owns the shoe shine stand across the flower shop, who hired a homeless man, fell in love and married him two months later. But the biggest freak of them all is the strange lady who came in last Thursday.
It was mid-afternoon and like most mid-afternoons, I was bored. Then She came in. I say She, since I have no idea who she was or if I'll ever see her again. She came in with a spring in her step and some really good, top-notch Amphetamines in her system. I mean, it made sense, since she kept raving about all the beautiful, positive energy that was coming from the flowers from our shop, floating all around downtown, creating beautiful, positive energy for everyone.
SHE: Beautiful. Just beautiful. Yes. Your flowers are beautiful.
ME: Thanks.
SHE: You are beautiful. Life is beautiful. Everything in your shop is beautiful. And I love the beautiful, positive energy coming forth from your flowers. It's making my spirit soar to outstanding heights. It's feeding creative energy to everyone downtown. I could feel it a mile away. My inner me is brimming with happiness and I feel so beautiful and bright. Thank you. Thank you.
She actually went on for several more minutes, inhaling the scent of the flowers to the point where I thought she would have an orgasm, right there in the Frontier Building lobby. God. I wish flower energy could make me feel that good. And that's when I noticed She's crocheted bag move. She saw me look at her bag with interest and pulled out a tiny, little brown ball of furry fluff. It looked like a toy, only it wasn't. It was a real live, adorably cute puppy! I had to hold this tiny little thing! The puppy was so small, it fit right in the palm of my hand, looking up at me with these big brown eyes. The moment an "Awwwww…" escaped from my lips, She came up with a "most wonderful, beautiful idea."
SHE: I have a most wonderful, beautiful idea! Look at you two! Oh! How it makes my beautiful heart cry out with beautiful joy! I am looking, with my soul, at your luminous auras and they are a beautiful, beautiful match! You two are meant for each other. It is your destiny! You belong to each other! I cannot take her away from you. She is yours.
And with that, She walked out the door and into downtown. I didn't know what to do. I was stuck with this tiny little puppy and I wondered if She really left her dog behind. Was I being Punk'd? I had to be. This was too weird not to be caught on camera for millions of people not to enjoy. But there were no secret cameras or Ashton Kutcher jumping out of the plants telling me to look into the camera. This was real.
Soon people began to notice I was holding a tiny puppy and they began to ask where it came from, who it belonged to, and if they had any more, could they buy one. I didn't know if She would come back and ask for her puppy, so I had to come up with a story. Fast.
ME: She belongs…to…my friend! Yeah! My friend. She's in, um, you know, court and so…you know. I'm dog sitting. For her. My friend. You know.
The story sold. I knew I would have to tell my boss Alice the truth, when she came in, but for the time being, my little white lie was working perfectly. That is, until our delivery driver Chamo came back to the shop to ask if there were any more deliveries. His eyes lit up when he saw the puppy and I tried hinting to him, that I would tell him the story later, since we had customers who were admiring the little puppy, but he demanded to know right away. So. I told him the same white lie. I felt bad for doing it, but I didn't want half of downtown thinking I stole a dog.
Chamo decided to stick around and even helped me close the shop, he wanted to meet "my friend" and ask, "my friend," if they had any more puppies. Of course, when "my friend" never showed, I knew She was never coming back. I had a brand new puppy! Now all I needed to do was get Chamo off his crazy idea of keeping the puppy, if "my friend" never came back from court. That and convince my parents I found the puppy on the side of the road. I could already hear my mother's voice telling me I should have ran to the person who gave me the puppy and told them a puppy was the last thing I needed in my life. Oh, wait. That was my mother, who said exactly that the moment she saw me holding the adorably, cute puppy. But since I, "found her" there was nobody to take it back to and so we welcomed a new addition to our family. A new addition, named Lucy (named after that classic Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, because that's the song that was playing on the radio when She gave her to me).
The next day, Lucy and I became better acquainted and I fell in love. Lucy totally took over my heart. As well as the house. As far as Lucy was concerned everything was hers and she let us know this by peeing in the middle of every room. She gave kisses to everyone she came in contact, but being that she is so small, her kisses only came up to everyone's ankles. My parents got the most kisses, as if Lucy knew where her next meal was coming from. She was so smart, so spoiled and so sick.
It was three in the morning when I heard Lucy cry. I had made the living room into a modern Arabian Nights palace, complete with pillows, blanket throws and a canopy made of three chairs and a thin linen sheet. I didn't know how Lucy would fare on my sleigh bed, so I figured a floor bed would be the next best thing. And it was until her crying woke me up and I saw that she was leaking diarrhea. I tried stroking her, comforting her, hoping to God it wasn't anything too serious, but as the minutes turned into hours, I knew something was up and so I rushed to the hospital.
By the time I got to the hospital, the towel I carried Lucy in was covered in shit. Her body was limp and her cries became louder and louder. I was scared. I loved Lucy so much and to see her in pain was just heartbreaking. And when she had a seizure while the nurse was looking her over, I lost it. Tears just started streaming down my face and the nurses had to escort me out. Suddenly, I understood all those Sally Field movies where she deals with the possibility of losing something precious to her, like Not Without My Daughter, Steel Magnolias, and almost any other movie she's ever done.
In the waiting room, time had slowed down. The minutes felt like hours and it seemed like a lifetime before the doctor called me back in. Dr. Shauna Stevens sounded like that secretary Roz, from Monsters Inc., but with a Cindy Brady-like lisp. I couldn't understand the words she was trying to form with her oversized, thick-as-fuck tongue, and I began to cry even more, hoping somebody with articulate speech could tell me what was going on with my puppy! Her blood sugar was really low and her white cell count was really high, which resulted as a seizure. And though low blood sugar was a major factor in Lucy’s seizure, there was also the possibility of parvovirus and distemper, which, according to the doctor, could lead to an early, untimely death.
That’s when they gave me the bill. $800. Well, $765.45, to be exact, but when a bill that’s high, you may as well round up and start imagining life without your morning white mocha macchiato from Starbucks. Of course, being a college student, I did not have that kind of money just laying around and so I turned to my financial aid. My parents. They of course, choked, the moment when the nurse explained the bill and I wondered if the animal hospital was capable of diagnosing two full grown human adults. They asked me if I was sure I wanted to keep this puppy. After all I had only spent a day with the puppy. How attached could I be? Would it really be so bad if I put it to sleep?
I couldn’t believe what they were saying. It was like the first chapter of Charlotte's Web. How could I kill an innocent little puppy? How could I kill my baby? It wasn’t her fault she got sick. She looked so helpless in her incubator with an IV attached in her left leg and it just made me cry even more. Guess this is what it feels like to be a parent. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. Oh, who am I kidding. I’m Mexican. When we stress, we eat. The food just comes to us in large quantities. And its all covered it in gooey, delicious cheese.
For the next three days, I couldn’t get out of bed. I kept calling the hospital every two hours, checking Lucy’s status and even though they kept telling me her health was improving, it wasn’t enough to comfort me. I was in shambles and I would be until that memorable Memorial Day, when I got the call that Lucy was ready to come home. There she was, all smiles and all ready to go home. Since then, I havent slept for days, I’ve completely lost my figure, but in the end, when it’s for somebody you love, it’s all worth it.
It was mid-afternoon and like most mid-afternoons, I was bored. Then She came in. I say She, since I have no idea who she was or if I'll ever see her again. She came in with a spring in her step and some really good, top-notch Amphetamines in her system. I mean, it made sense, since she kept raving about all the beautiful, positive energy that was coming from the flowers from our shop, floating all around downtown, creating beautiful, positive energy for everyone.
SHE: Beautiful. Just beautiful. Yes. Your flowers are beautiful.
ME: Thanks.
SHE: You are beautiful. Life is beautiful. Everything in your shop is beautiful. And I love the beautiful, positive energy coming forth from your flowers. It's making my spirit soar to outstanding heights. It's feeding creative energy to everyone downtown. I could feel it a mile away. My inner me is brimming with happiness and I feel so beautiful and bright. Thank you. Thank you.
She actually went on for several more minutes, inhaling the scent of the flowers to the point where I thought she would have an orgasm, right there in the Frontier Building lobby. God. I wish flower energy could make me feel that good. And that's when I noticed She's crocheted bag move. She saw me look at her bag with interest and pulled out a tiny, little brown ball of furry fluff. It looked like a toy, only it wasn't. It was a real live, adorably cute puppy! I had to hold this tiny little thing! The puppy was so small, it fit right in the palm of my hand, looking up at me with these big brown eyes. The moment an "Awwwww…" escaped from my lips, She came up with a "most wonderful, beautiful idea."
SHE: I have a most wonderful, beautiful idea! Look at you two! Oh! How it makes my beautiful heart cry out with beautiful joy! I am looking, with my soul, at your luminous auras and they are a beautiful, beautiful match! You two are meant for each other. It is your destiny! You belong to each other! I cannot take her away from you. She is yours.And with that, She walked out the door and into downtown. I didn't know what to do. I was stuck with this tiny little puppy and I wondered if She really left her dog behind. Was I being Punk'd? I had to be. This was too weird not to be caught on camera for millions of people not to enjoy. But there were no secret cameras or Ashton Kutcher jumping out of the plants telling me to look into the camera. This was real.
Soon people began to notice I was holding a tiny puppy and they began to ask where it came from, who it belonged to, and if they had any more, could they buy one. I didn't know if She would come back and ask for her puppy, so I had to come up with a story. Fast.
ME: She belongs…to…my friend! Yeah! My friend. She's in, um, you know, court and so…you know. I'm dog sitting. For her. My friend. You know.
The story sold. I knew I would have to tell my boss Alice the truth, when she came in, but for the time being, my little white lie was working perfectly. That is, until our delivery driver Chamo came back to the shop to ask if there were any more deliveries. His eyes lit up when he saw the puppy and I tried hinting to him, that I would tell him the story later, since we had customers who were admiring the little puppy, but he demanded to know right away. So. I told him the same white lie. I felt bad for doing it, but I didn't want half of downtown thinking I stole a dog.
Chamo decided to stick around and even helped me close the shop, he wanted to meet "my friend" and ask, "my friend," if they had any more puppies. Of course, when "my friend" never showed, I knew She was never coming back. I had a brand new puppy! Now all I needed to do was get Chamo off his crazy idea of keeping the puppy, if "my friend" never came back from court. That and convince my parents I found the puppy on the side of the road. I could already hear my mother's voice telling me I should have ran to the person who gave me the puppy and told them a puppy was the last thing I needed in my life. Oh, wait. That was my mother, who said exactly that the moment she saw me holding the adorably, cute puppy. But since I, "found her" there was nobody to take it back to and so we welcomed a new addition to our family. A new addition, named Lucy (named after that classic Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, because that's the song that was playing on the radio when She gave her to me).
The next day, Lucy and I became better acquainted and I fell in love. Lucy totally took over my heart. As well as the house. As far as Lucy was concerned everything was hers and she let us know this by peeing in the middle of every room. She gave kisses to everyone she came in contact, but being that she is so small, her kisses only came up to everyone's ankles. My parents got the most kisses, as if Lucy knew where her next meal was coming from. She was so smart, so spoiled and so sick.It was three in the morning when I heard Lucy cry. I had made the living room into a modern Arabian Nights palace, complete with pillows, blanket throws and a canopy made of three chairs and a thin linen sheet. I didn't know how Lucy would fare on my sleigh bed, so I figured a floor bed would be the next best thing. And it was until her crying woke me up and I saw that she was leaking diarrhea. I tried stroking her, comforting her, hoping to God it wasn't anything too serious, but as the minutes turned into hours, I knew something was up and so I rushed to the hospital.
By the time I got to the hospital, the towel I carried Lucy in was covered in shit. Her body was limp and her cries became louder and louder. I was scared. I loved Lucy so much and to see her in pain was just heartbreaking. And when she had a seizure while the nurse was looking her over, I lost it. Tears just started streaming down my face and the nurses had to escort me out. Suddenly, I understood all those Sally Field movies where she deals with the possibility of losing something precious to her, like Not Without My Daughter, Steel Magnolias, and almost any other movie she's ever done.
In the waiting room, time had slowed down. The minutes felt like hours and it seemed like a lifetime before the doctor called me back in. Dr. Shauna Stevens sounded like that secretary Roz, from Monsters Inc., but with a Cindy Brady-like lisp. I couldn't understand the words she was trying to form with her oversized, thick-as-fuck tongue, and I began to cry even more, hoping somebody with articulate speech could tell me what was going on with my puppy! Her blood sugar was really low and her white cell count was really high, which resulted as a seizure. And though low blood sugar was a major factor in Lucy’s seizure, there was also the possibility of parvovirus and distemper, which, according to the doctor, could lead to an early, untimely death.
That’s when they gave me the bill. $800. Well, $765.45, to be exact, but when a bill that’s high, you may as well round up and start imagining life without your morning white mocha macchiato from Starbucks. Of course, being a college student, I did not have that kind of money just laying around and so I turned to my financial aid. My parents. They of course, choked, the moment when the nurse explained the bill and I wondered if the animal hospital was capable of diagnosing two full grown human adults. They asked me if I was sure I wanted to keep this puppy. After all I had only spent a day with the puppy. How attached could I be? Would it really be so bad if I put it to sleep?I couldn’t believe what they were saying. It was like the first chapter of Charlotte's Web. How could I kill an innocent little puppy? How could I kill my baby? It wasn’t her fault she got sick. She looked so helpless in her incubator with an IV attached in her left leg and it just made me cry even more. Guess this is what it feels like to be a parent. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. Oh, who am I kidding. I’m Mexican. When we stress, we eat. The food just comes to us in large quantities. And its all covered it in gooey, delicious cheese.
For the next three days, I couldn’t get out of bed. I kept calling the hospital every two hours, checking Lucy’s status and even though they kept telling me her health was improving, it wasn’t enough to comfort me. I was in shambles and I would be until that memorable Memorial Day, when I got the call that Lucy was ready to come home. There she was, all smiles and all ready to go home. Since then, I havent slept for days, I’ve completely lost my figure, but in the end, when it’s for somebody you love, it’s all worth it.
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