Toast Goes South on Vacation

It seemed like a great idea. My daughter had been wanting to get a dog for several months. We, on the other hand, had been gently counseling her on what a dog would actually require of her in her young adult, on-the-go life.

So when MJ and I had the chance to get away to the Sunshine State for a week in January (part-business, part-pleasure), we had only one big hurdle to jump: what to do with our dog “Toast” for seven days? One of us put two-and-two together and decided that Toast would go south on vacation too—to our daughter’s house in Chicago! (Hey—Toast loves the snow and cold weather, okay? She doesn’t need to know that no one goes “south” to Chicago on vacation.)

Okay, got the picture? Have dog, will travel (for a visit). A win-win deal.

So when I drove half-way to Chicago today to pick up Toast at the end of her two-week “vacation”… well, let’s just say that Janna has decided that she won’t be getting a dog anytime soon after all. It’s not that she hates dogs. Or Toast. It’s just that, well… dogs require a little more attention than what one might first think. Basically, they come into your house with one motto: “It’s all about me.”

What happened? Maybe the best way to describe it is to let you read the “Thank You” card that Toast gave to Janna today. It reads…

“Thank you for taking care of me when Mom and Dad went somewhere without me. I enjoyed almost everything—the curtains, shades, towels, toilet paper, Kleenex, the wallet (including the credit cards, dollar bills and pictures), and the chicken nuggets you laid out for me on the counter to defrost. Thanks again for all the walks, games of fetch and cuddle-time on the couch. I was on my best behavior, but if I wasn’t perfect, just remember that bad dogs have more fun! P.S. I was disappointed that I didn’t get a better look at your boyfriend’s new cell phone, since his old one was so fun to chew on last summer!”

Mob Hysteria at Sunset

At first we didn’t take much notice. Just an older couple dawdling along toward the direction of the beach. Then another couple. But as we strolled along, scoping out this unfamiliar neighborhood of tiny houses just a half a block from the beach, the street quickly and strangely filled with more and more people. So much so that it was un-nerving! But there was something that wasn’t quite right either… it took me a minute to decipher what it was.

That’s it! They were all walking in the same direction. Scary. Like one of those mass hysteria scenes that you see on movies when news comes over the TV that an impending asteroid is about to hit the earth, and everyone comes streaming out of their homes into the streets with blank bewildered looks in their eyes, resigned to face their own death within the next half hour!

Well, ok. Maybe it wasn’t quite that much mass hysteria. But it was strangely similar! Merlajean and I both wondered, “What’s going on? What’s wrong? Maybe a plane just went down in the ocean, like in New York.”

So we joined the panic-stricken mob and scurried down to the beach.

We headed toward a little park. Through palm trees. Over the grass. Around flowering bushes. And out into an opening. And there they all were. Dozens of people. Just standing around. Many were looking in the same direction. We quickly glanced in that direction and saw—the setting sun. It was a big, bright firey-orange ball, just hanging on the horizon. Hmmm. We quickly looked out to sea for signs of a tall black plumage of smoke. We scanned the horizon for rescue choppers. For cop cars. For panic-stricken dads and moms. Nothing.

So I struck up a conversation with the elderly couple six feet in front of us and asked them what was going on. “Just watchin’ the sun set,” they said. They could tell we were from out of town, so they let us in on their secret. “When you get to be our age, this is the most exciting thing that happens each day! Everyone comes out for it.”

We looked around. Sure enough, most of the crowd was 60 years-old-plus folks. Walter, the husband, told us that tonight wouldn’t be too spectacular since the sky was so clear. But last night—wow! It was something else! We struck up a warm conversation, and kidded and joked about coming down here to Florida from the Snowy North.

The sun had now set. Like clock-work, everyone all turned and began streaming off the beach, out of the park, back toward their homes. One more day had yet again slipped away from the people in the Sunshine State. They had come to pay their daily homage to this god. And in another twelve hours it would begin all over again. God willing.