The Bicker Board

[HiloJulie]

"When you live in a glass house, you shouldn't throw stones"

In honor of Yak's pointing out, if you're gonna tell a story first person perspectives are really the way to go..

Hey, cute, you know Jules, you kind of remind me of a time in my youth..

For a spell there.. maybe ’68 through ’72, I live in a small little town in the Sierra, named Westwood, population around 2k. A small little college town. Well really it was a logging town but a bunch of students from the school over the pass in Susanville filled the ranks as well. And, omg, in the winter it was snowbound. The kind where the snow would be deep enough one could walk right up onto roofs of the houses some years, and without snowblowers back in the day we did a lot of shoveling.. deep alleys just to get to a front door.

Anyways, Westwood was commonly known as a place that had more dogs than people. And when that snow set in often times going to the post office was the height of the day. And everyone sorta knew when the mail would be up, and it was as much the social event of the day as it was the chore of fetching the post. And a particular pattern emerged.

So everyone would stagger into town to get their mail, and then linger at the store, the only one in town, getting some grub to last out the next round of snow flurries as well as to chat amongst ourselves. And omg did the dogs get into it as well. If you were keeping track you quickly realized every single dog had themselves a real personality. And, of course, in a dog’s world there’s a hierarchy, the biggest, the meanest, and the strongest always had to pick a fight with the wannabes, the up and comings, and we pretty much had an unorganized dog fight every day right there in the parking lot of the store. 

Now I, not being all that interested in dog fights, wasn’t one that was standing in the front row cheering on the big guy in whatever round of entanglement he’d be in with the one that wanted his ass, but would rather be swapping stories with my buddies over on the side, and then I began to realize there was this one dog that really had no fight in him. Every day he would hide behind the corner of the store and peek around it to watch all the commotion, and then as soon as one dog won and the other lost and they were both off licking their wounds he’d come out from behind that corner and bark away.. bark bark bark. As if now that all the fight and adrenalin was worn out of everyone else it was his turn to declare his superiority.. bow wow wow.

And, you know, Jules, you remind of him. No business in a matter but omg you got the need.. the deeply rooted need to bark. Oops, I mean post.

"When you live in a glass house, you shouldn't throw stones"

"Every accusation is a confession"