What We Keep

It is a point of grave concern that I do not receive proper credit for the things I do NOT say or do.

Because most people are NOT professional communicators, I cannot readily rely on others to recognize those infrequent instances when I have exercised enough self-restraint to NOT say something that is on my mind. It vexes me that this rare revving of my internal editor goes mostly unnoticed. I have worked very hard to remember that the correct response to a disingenuous, “It’s so nice to see you,” is NOT “Well, it is nice to be visible.” It has been almost two weeks since I referred to someone’s mouth as a pie-hole. Not a single solitary person has said to me, “You know I’ve noticed you haven’t told me to shut my pie hole this week. That has been refreshing.” Even after I pointed this oversight out to K, I was met with a thoughtful, although labored silence.

And that time I was gunning the truck, wholly intending to run the Johnson County jerk in a Camry who just gave me the finger off the right shoulder of the road and down into a ditch to perish in an explosive fire ball, no one thanked me for my restraint in allowing a cooler head to prevail and instead righting the vehicle and going on my merry way. Not a single person acknowledged the herculean effort of will required in that instance. Although the rider in my vehicle was laughing nervously, or perhaps hysterically, she never once said, “Hey, good job not committing vehicular homicide.”

So maybe, in trying to help out the Great Dane rescue, we agreed to try fostering a few wayward Danes while they were awaiting the perfect home for adoption. And maybe, we ended up with a few we just weren’t able to let go to anyone else. We are just talking a few – three tops, and at least one of those wouldn’t have been adoptable in any circumstance, but mostly because she was as rash and impulsive as me. And so we earn the hairshirt of “foster failures,” even though I counted up last night and at least twice as many Danes have left here on adoption as have stayed. That’s six, not that anyone’s keeping count.