The pipes, the pipes are callin’

By Sean Pearson
My grandparents had some kind of odd affinity for poodles that I never really quite understood.
For as long as I can remember, my grandmother had a dog named Danny Boy. Now, as far as I know, we’re not of any particular Irish descent, and I’ve yet to figure out what poodles have to do with Ireland.
But maybe that’s not the point.
Danny Boy was quite possibly the meanest, most ill-tempered four-legged creature on the face of the earth. He was also the most spoiled creature. When we went over to Grandma and Grandpas’s house to visit, there was always a cabinet filled with toys.
They were Danny Boy’s toys.
Oh sure, from time to time, Grandpa would set up the Lionel train set and we would watch it go around the track some 30,000 times. Or Grandma might let us watch her clean her dentures, if we’d been good.
But as far as toys went, everyone knew they belonged to Danny Boy.
Including D.B. himself.
Now, I wasn’t an especially mean kid. I may have accidentally broken one or two of my sister’s Neil Sedaka records, but to this day, I simply can’t tell you how her favorite David Cassidy poster was defaced by a green Magic Marker. I know I had nothing to do with it.
And I was always really nice to those kids in class who ate paste and talked about Santa Claus in April.
(There was an incident involving bees in the fourth grade that some of you may or may not remember. Let’s just say I have since paid my debt to apiary society for capturing said bees and removing their stingers. I’m not sure if bees believe in reincarnation, but I’m pretty sure some of the more recent stingers embedded in me were put there with a certain amount of vengeance.)
So, if you leave out Neil Sedaka and just balance my niceness toward paste-eaters with my crimes against bee-manity, I think I come out to be a fairly nice guy.
That being said, I secretly wanted to reach out and snatch Danny Boy bald. I never actually did. Obviously — as I am still alive to tell this story and not drooling the semi-comatose mix of apricots and sweet potatoes my grandmother would have force-fed me, had I actually removed any hair from the precious poodle’s pageboy. And, despite what my sister tells you, I did not tease, taunt or torture D.B. in any way. (I mean, it’s not like I tied a sock around a cat to watch it fall over. That came much later.)
I don’t really think taking food from Danny Boy’s bowl and eating it in front of him would actually be considered taunting, do you? (Don’t worry, it was dry food. And my sister told on me before I could really even get him to give me a dirty look.)
Hiding his favorite squeaky toys was possibly a bit on the meaner side. Silly dogs and object permanence. They never learn. And surely grandma had to know that “Senor Snoozles” didn’t crawl into the upstairs medicine cabinet on his own.
And yes — every stupid, cheesy, squealing, rubbery toy had a name that was even more stupid than el Senor. Grandma reveled in showing off how Danny Boy knew the name of each toy and would retrieve them on command. Somehow, she wasn’t as impressed when I got to one of them before D.B.
(You know, I’m beginning to get a little uncomfortable with these references to my eating dog food and retrieving squeaky toys. You should know that I really didn’t have any kind of delusions as a kid. I mean, I didn’t think I was a dog, or anything like that. No really … I didn’t.)
Over the years, Danny Boy and I would meet periodically when my parents decided it was time for another “vacation” to see the grandparents. At first, it was a little awkward. D.B. and I tried to put the past behind us, but old wounds and chew toys run deep. He would look at me with that same steeled stare, his upper lip snarling ever so slightly to reveal the gleam of his tiny, barracuda teeth. I knew it was just his way of saying, “welcome back.”
In turn, I would always be sure to rub that little knot on his head that remained after years of sliding into the kitchen cabinets when he chased Phranklin Phrog across the linoleum floor. I’m not saying who threw Phranklin across the kitchen floor, I’m just saying that, apparently, object permanence isn’t the only concept dogs have trouble grasping.
As I grew older, and Danny Boy turned grayer, he pretty much went half blind, lost all his teeth and got really confused at times. I tried to be nice to him. I stayed out of his food, scratched his ears and even brought his squeaky toys to him. Still, he knew it was me. There was a twitch in his eye — the good eye — and a wheezy little growl that always let me know he wasn’t too old to sink his gums into me if I got outta line.
It was a sad day when Danny Boy died.
At least I’m sure it was for someone.
My grandma cried, and then went out and bought another poodle.
She named him Danny Boy II.
Maybe grandparents struggle with object permanence, too.

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