Dog Day Afternoon (27/2/13)

I debated whether to put this one back up. I don't come out of it very well. So hiding it would be cowardly.

A while later, this is where 'Half The Sky' started...

So.....

Errmm......

I killed a dog.

No, wait, let me explain before you stop reading. I can think of at least two friends that are about to de-friend me on Facebook and god knows you need all the friends you can get nowadays. 
Let me say in my defence that it was a long, long time ago, that I still feel inordinately guilty about it and above all, remember at all points that follow, no matter what you may think of my behaviour....
It. Was. An. Accident.

It was Christmas Eve, (and you can tell that I've worked in retail far too long because my natural default setting is to write Xmas as what I do every December has nothing whatsoever to do with religion, anyway...it was Christmas Eve,) 1984 or 1985, I can never remember which. I was working for an insurance brokers on County Rd. A stones throw from Goodison, although I never did. Throw stones at Goodison, that is. Sorry, lousy joke, I'm just trying to delay the inevitable on this.

So, there was this party, at the office in Childwall, and I thought that I had a minor chance of pulling one of the girls that worked in one of the other offices around Liverpool. I don't remember who it was but I do remember that I quite definitely didn't pull.

My boss wasn't going to the party. This was for the 'young ones' and she was about 40. The fact of her not going didn't make her any more amenable to the idea of me leaving early to get the bus across town; I was locking up and I couldn't lock up any earlier than 4pm. The only bus I could get was from the end of Queens Drive at 4.15; if anyone was mad enough to come in looking for insurance late on Christmas Eve then it would be a push to get to the bus and there would be no party and definitely no pulling. (Not that there was anyway.)

Obviously someone was mad enough to come in just before closing to take out insurance.

The race was, quite obviously, on. Like a sprinting Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man, the running was everything. Now, I had been put in charge of 'the tunes' which, in 84 or 85 (whichever) meant a ghetto blaster. To be precise, our kid's ghetto blaster; a bloody huge Hitachi double cassette model which I was cradling in my arms as I hurtled through Liverpool 4.

I was about halfway to 'the Drive' when calamity struck.

A dog appeared. Moving at approximately the same speed as me. Across my path. It took both my legs in one go. I sprawled in the general direction of the pavement with some considerable velocity. My knee hit paving stone. My tooth hit ghetto blaster. Searing pain, not unlike somebody taking a hammer to the edge of your mouth. Very like the kerbstone scene from American History X. (Look it up, it's bloody horrible)

The dog? Straight off the kerb, out of my path and straight into the path of a car that did far more damage to the dog than the dog had to me. I was rising slowly to my knees, greeted by a small crowd gathering. Around the dog. Nobody seemed overly concerned about me. And in fairness I could see why. Rapid shallow breathing, blood pooling slowly around it, it was horrible. This was someone's pet. This was someone's Christmas Eve. This was someone's Christmas Day absolutely ruined.

"Has it got a collar on? Is there a name and address on it?"

People were attending to the obviously dying dog. There was clearly nothing that could be done, it was a matter of waiting for the poor animal to slip away. It was equally clear that there were no contact details on the dog's collar; no way of reaching the owner. I was bereft. All I could think was that some poor bloke was going to have to sit his kids down on Christmas Morning and explain that "Fluffy hasn't come home." (I've no idea why I thought of him as 'fluffy', he wasnt as far as I could see) What could I possibly do to help? What could I offer to atone for this?

Well, nothing, apparently. Unseen, unnoticed, I sidled away and headed for Childwall.

Come on, I'm not saying I'm proud of the fact. I was 21, there were other people in charge of the situation and nothing that could be done to help. I'm not a practical person now, I definitely wasn't then. I could offer nothing in the way of assistance. And there was the outside chance of copping off. Tell me who wouldn't have behaved as I did........okay, fair point, most people probably.

I'm fairly sure the girl that I was expecting didn't show that night anyway. So that's probably karma right there.

And, if its any consolation, the crown that replaced that tooth (and remember the dog DID break my tooth) a couple of years later, is loose again and tomorrow I will spend sitting in the dentists in the
hope of having it glued back in place.

So, that's it, that's how, once upon a time, I killed a dog. And I genuinely do feel guilty about it nearly thirty years later. Every bloody time this tooth starts acting up again I know, without a shadow of a doubt, this is Fluffy's revenge.