Dog Years

I am almost 63 dog years old and I won’t tell you my name because I don’t share that kind of thing with strangers. That is also why I gave you my age in dog years. If you want to know exactly how old I am, you will have to do the math. I would do the math. I am someone who makes effort. Anyone who wants to know me should also make effort. I am really good at giving attention. I say give attention, instead of pay attention, because if you think about attention as something that can be used up and spent, well, then, you are someone who does not deserve to know my name anyway.

I will help you with examples. In this crazy bunch of bananas of life, it is usually the little things that matter. Like how the hot dog man shakes the extra water off the hot dog before he puts it inside the bun, or the way Mom puts my Gatorade in the freezer the night before my baseball games so that it will still be icy in the 3rd inning. The world matters on these little things. So, if you were really giving attention, and not just paying it, you would do the math (no calculator!) and find out how human years old I am. If you did that, then I would be happy to tell you my name. I might even tell you that I think dogs are better people than people are and that I like to think about my age in dog years because it helps me love Paws, who was, and will always be, my best friend. If you make enough effort then I will consider you a friend, too. In terms of friends, as Dad used to say about his brain whenever Mom asked why he had to be so silly, “I am in the market for a new one.” 

If you do want to be my friend, you probably want to know what I would want to know, which is, “Who am I?” There are many things that I am—for instance a player of baseball, and a lover of dogs over humans, and a liker of roasted sweet potatoes, and many other things—so maybe it will be easier to explain what is not me. Here are three things: One, I am not betrayer. Two, I am not an outdoor boy. Three, I am not a boy who learns things; I am a boy who acquires things. I have read most parts of Wikipedia—even the parts I wasn’t supposed to, even in Ms. Drabkin’s math class—so I have acquired a lot of things, like who won the 1994 World Series (no one!) and what the cure for cancer is (still working on it). Some things you cannot acquire from Wikipedia, though. Some things you need to acquire through what Dad used to call, “The Encyclopedia of Life,” which isn’t the kind of encyclopedia you can flip through but more like one that flips through you. 

One of the things I have acquired from the Encyclopedia of Life is that the great outdoors is actually one of the least great things. There is nothing great about the great outdoors unless your idea of “great” is dangerous wild animals that could kill and eat you for breakfast. That is what I told Gary when he asked if I wanted to go hunting with him but he just laughed. Gary is always laughing. That is why I call him Haha Gary. It is a smart nickname because it describes what he sounds like and also my opinion of him. I know that Mom and I do not see eyes for eyes on the topic of Haha Gary. She says he is a good guy because he works for the government and has, “truly helped us.” But I think his real job is eating all our cereal and I never know what Mom is talking about when she says, “us,” or, “helped,” anyway. People who work for the government are supposed to be good listeners but Haha Gary still took me hunting in the Not-So-Great outdoors even when I told him that it did not sound like a cup of tea with my name on it.

Hunting stunk. We stayed in a treehouse, which was almost cool beans, except it was a lame treehouse that did not have a rope ladder or even a big chest filled with baseball cards. We did not bring any good snacks and we did not bring Paws, either, because we had to be quiet so that the deer would not know that we were trying to murder them. Haha Gary said the trip, “might take your mind off everything.” He was one hundred million trillion percent wrong. My mind stayed just where it was and I thought about Dad and chewed on my hair the whole time. 

Dr. Feinstein told me not to chew my hair and Mom told me not to do what Dr. Feinstein told me not to do. I am making effort about the situation (promise!) but I have a lot of hair and it is really curly and it falls all over my face so it is hard to avoid. On Wikipedia, I acquired the fact that hair is just dead skin cells. The idea makes me sick. It also makes me sad. I do not like the thought that any of me could die, not even a skin cell. And then I get even sadder when I think about how people cut off their dead parts and throw them away all the time and no one thinks it is weird and no one talks about it. I do not like that because not talking about sad things does not make them less sad. That is something I have recently acquired from the Encyclopedia of Life.

Apparently, I heard the news when Haha Gary and I got back from our terrible trip in the Not-So-Great Outdoors. Truth is, I do not remember. Dr. Feinstein says that, somewhere, I might actually remember. She says that maybe the memory is hiding in the back of my brain and I just cannot find it, not even by taking a photo of the back of my head, which I have tried many times, though all that comes out is my hair.  

The day after Mom took me to get a haircut. I did not want a haircut, which is what I told her in the car on the way. I gave her my reasons, including about the dead skin cells. She smiled a little and told me she appreciated what my brain could do but that my hair was not really a part of me so it did not matter. I told her she was crazy bananas because how could she know what was and what was not a part of me? She told me it was not nice to call people crazy and that I should apologize. So I did. And we did not talk for almost three whole songs on the radio. Then I said that my hair was a part of me because I thought it was. She did not say anything back to that. She just drummed on the steering wheel, like Dad used to. So I told her she was drumming on the steering wheel like Dad used to. Then her eyes got squinty. The wrinkles around her eyes looked like a pond after you try and skip a stone on it. I remember thinking that she looked way older, like 600 dog years old, at least. I used to think that all time was the same. Every day as long as the day before and the day after. I do not think I think that anymore.

When we got to the haircut place, I did not take off my safety belt. Mom said that the family would want to see my face and that they would not be able to see my face beneath all my hair. 

I said, “What if I do not want them to see me?” And she said, “But it will help them to see you.” And I said, “But what if I do not want to see them?” And she said, “But it will help you to see them.” And I said, “But it will help me to keep my hair.” And she said, “You have to look presentable.” And I said, “Why?” And she said, “Because.” And I said, “I am presentable to myself.” And she said, “Don’t.” And I said, “Why did you make me go to the Not-So-Great outdoors with Haha Gary when you knew Dad was so sick?” She did not say anything to that. And I said, “If you are going to cut my hair you might as well kill me and make it a double funeral.” And she did not say anything. 

I think people do not know what is good about them and what is bad. It is not hard to know easy facts, like who stole the most bases in history (Ricky Henderson, duh) or how many deer live in the Not-So-Great Outdoors (not enough to go kill them, I think). But it is really hard to know hard facts, like the facts of the Encyclopedia of Life. The Encyclopedia of Life does not give answers. In the Encyclopedia of Life, there are not even always facts and, sometimes, what looks like a fact really isn’t one, anyway. You cannot really know a difference. In class, Ms. Drabkin said that positive and negative was the difference between being greater than or less than zero. But I am pretty sure there is no zero to start from in the Encyclopedia of Life. 

After I told her to kill me, Mom told me to please get out of the car. I knew she was hurt because she never said, “please.” So I got out and Mom stayed in. I went into the haircut place and sat in front of a mirror and I could see through the mirror and outside the window that she was on the phone in the car, crying. I guessed that the person she was talking to was Haha Gary. A woman who smelled like a grapefruit told me she was excited to help me look on the outside what I felt like on the inside. I took the scissors out of her hand and threw them against the mirror and watched me shatter to a hundred million trillion pieces. Then they cut off all my hair. 

The funeral stunk. I do not have much to say about it other than it was the type of funeral Dad would have hated. It was, as he would say, “Too-Sad Land,” which was a place he told me never to go.

Before Haha Gary picked me up to go hunting the weekend he died, I talked to Dad on the phone one last time. He asked me what I was thinking. I told him I figured I was going to be in Too-Sad Land the whole time. I told him that I wanted him to stay away from Too-Sad Land, too.

“I am not in Too-Sad Land,” he said. “Tell me the truth,” I said. “That is the truth, kiddo” he said, and coughed. “Okay, I believe you,” I said, but I did not. I have acquired the fact that grownups are completely wrong on purpose sometimes. I am not sure there is any sense in that.

A month after the funeral, Paws died. Not because he was sick like Dad, but because he was old. Then, I really was a lonesome sweet potato. I figure I still am. Tomorrow is my sixty-third dog year birthday. It will be another forty nine until I can drive myself to Dad’s grave to give my attention without anyone else paying their attention and talking at me about, “the situation.”

Forty-nine dog years is too many to wait. These past seven felt like waiting for a rain delay before the game has even started. Dr. Feinstein says that all things move too slowly, except when they don’t. That sounds like the kind of thing grownups say when what they really mean is, “you just have to be a grownup to get it.”

But, if you ask me, that is a big load of deer poop. I know what Dr. Feinstein is really saying. What she is really saying is, “I cannot help you.” Well, guess what. I can help myself. All I need to do is acquire more. All I need to do is get married and divorced so I can acquire how that feels, and get sick and die and buried so I can acquire how that feels. Then, I will never have to wonder what those things feel like. Because—if I really think about it, if I squint my eyes and try to find that place in the back of my head—that is exactly what has got me here in Too-Sand Land. I do not want to wonder anymore.

Sorry, I know that does not answer your question. It is just my brain, is all. But do not worry about me. I am in the market for a new one.

Andres Vaamonde works as a literary book scout in New York City. He was a Third Place Finalist in Short Fiction at the New Orleans Literary Festival (2019), a Semi-Finalist in Conium Review’s Innovative Short Fiction Contest (2020), and a Finalist in Key West Literary Seminar's Marianne Russo Award for Emerging Writers (2020). He's 175 dog years old.