HUMOR

The Day Thunder Changed Our Dog

It was the first and last evolutionary leap I ever saw

by author

My childhood dog, Pepper, feared thunder.

• It made her run.
• It made her whine.
• Once, a storm sent her flying into a corner of the living room, the same corner Mom and Dad used for punishing us kids. To this day, if someone said, “Go stand in the corner,” I’d be there long before I knew what I’d done wrong. It’s the only part of the room that makes sense of my corner-shaped body.
• There I stood for years, quivering with rage, carving super tiny words in the paint with my fingernails — “hell,” “shit,” and “damn” — to make Mom and Dad secretly pay for their so called justice.
• I’m guessing Pepper ran to that corner because she’d seen us there so often, fleeing the thunder of Mom and Dad’s wrath. It must have seemed like the place to be in thunder times.
• She ran into the corner but didn’t headbutt the corner.
• She reared.
• Like a bear.
• She stretched her paws up as high as she could reach.
• There she stood, trembling,
• her shivering claws circling and underlining the hells, the shits, and the damns.