Two questions came to mind while lying awake at 3:30 in the morning listening to my neighbor’s dogs bark. First, how accurate am I with a frozen hotdog at 20 paces, given total darkness and a six-foot fence about mid-way? And second, how is it that women have all the power?
My current dog annoyance issues have roused a memory of when I was asked by Jan, a female friend in college, to house for her a German Shepherd puppy. She lived in the Delta, Delta, Delta sorority house and couldn’t keep pets. I lived in a duplex and, if asked by the right girl, would have gladly housed a llama.
I agreed to help and as usual spent a lot more time with the dog than with the girl. Annabelle (the dog) was unimpressed by my show of caretaking bravado. She instinctively set out to remove me from my leadership position in the home, utilizing the age old tactic of sleep deprivation.
Every night I would place her in a makeshift kennel I lovingly constructed out of closet and cardboard. She understood this to be her cue to begin barking and not stop until either she broke my will or Jesus returned. Hour upon torturous hour she would yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! I hadn’t yet developed all the servant-leader parenting skills I now possess, and therefore resorted to heavy-handed authoritarianism.
“ANNABELLE! QUIET!!!”
yap! yap! yap! yap! yap!
“I’M NOT KIDDING!! QUIET! I MEAN IT!”
yap! yap! yap! yap! yap!
I’d throw off my blankets in a display of force, stomp over to her and demand her obedience. I was the guy in charge. She was the guest. And we would live by my rules!
“DO YOU WANT TO SLEEP OUTSIDE?! HUH?! IT’S FREEZING OUT THERE! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?! AND DON’T THINK I WON’T DO IT! I MEAN IT! ANYMORE OF YOUR NOISE AND YOU’RE OUT!!”
yap! yap! yap! yap!
Night after night we repeated this routine, Annabelle barking, me yelling, and Jan sleeping soundly in her sorority dorm room. I wasn’t in charge and Annabelle knew it. It was Jan who held all the cards in this relationship; Annabelle was second-in-command and I was decisively at the bottom of the power structure.
On the bright side, the sleepless nights gave me time to ruminate on why, exactly, had this happened to me. What wiring problem in my brain led to this state of affairs? Jan was sweet, but I had no romantic interest in her. However, if a guy had asked me to take care of a dog, I would have, without hesitation, said no, not that it even matters because a guy is never going to ask another guy to take care of his dog unless he, the asker, has a terminal disease.
The whole thing was too much for me to deconstruct, so I shelved it and fed and watered and walked Annabelle for three months, at which point summer arrived and she was delivered to Jan’s dad, who suffered from the same affliction I did.
Life returned to normal and soon Annabelle was a distant memory. The issue never rose again until years later, as a newlywed, when my wife announced that she had visited a pet store and found a puppy. Again, this inherent wiring caused me to support the idea, and about $100 later Macy was ours.
The repercussions of this decision were, and currently are, too many to list. Suffice to say it starts with an apartment eviction and ends with our veterinarian buying himself a new Winnebago. To my delight, though, my wife has carried the yeoman’s share of the puppy nurturing, unlike the aforementioned Jan.
I’ve grown to love Macy like a furry child with halitosis, but I never would have sought her out on my own. It was my wife’s mysterious power that pulled me in, a force that disconnected my male cause-and-effect wiring and engaged my knight in shining armor gene. My desire to rescue the distressed damsel muzzled my let’s-be-practical intuition. But is that really such a bad thing?
Let’s face it, in suburbia I have very few opportunities for heroics. Although retrieving jewelry from the toilet requires some measure of bravery, it hardly ranks up there with sword-fighting a gang of desperados, saving the girl, and riding off on my black stallion after carving a “J.T.” on the castle wall. Did I mention my washboard abs?
So when my new wife asked if we could purchase a puppy, my knight-instinct awakened, and I saddled up and got her a puppy—and a kennel—and a colorful leash—and a cute collar—and a training video—and, you get the point. Not once did I think about the Annabelle Incident. All I could see was the gracious adoration of my wife, our cute selves strolling down the sidewalk with our darling puppy, under the admiring eyes of jealous onlookers.
“What a cute puppy,” they’d say. “Where did you get her?”
“Oh, my husband bought her for me,” my wife would ooze.
“Can’t find guys like that anymore. You’d better hang on to that one. He’s a keeper!”
Then my wife, the onlookers, Macy and the news cameras would all turn to me and smile in agreement. He’s a real hero. My wife kisses me on the cheek. I wink at the camera. Cue background fireworks. Then, of course, come the media interviews.
Me: Well it was the least I could do, Matt. The poor girl wanted a puppy. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I’m no hero (lie). Anyone in my situation would have done the same thing (bigger lie).
Matt Lauer: No, John. That’s not true. I know I wouldn’t do what you did. I couldn’t do it. I’ve interviewed a lot of guys, and I know most of them wouldn’t do it either. I know for a fact Harrison Ford wouldn’t do it. Vin Diesel? Gimme a break. Don’t even get me started on Tom Cruise.
Me: Johnny Depp might buy his wife a ferret.
Matt: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho!! Stop, man, you are a riot!!
If you’re wondering what I’m doing when you see my lips moving in the car next to you, this is it. I am preparing for my interview on the Today Show. I am being winsome, humble, witty and smart. I am cracking up Matt Lauer. I am being acknowledged for my courageous heroism.
This mysterious force that compels a man to gladly retrieve earrings from toilets for a girl, to trap and kill potentially poisonous insects under the kitchen sink for her, to buy her the puppy of her dreams—is really no mystery. It’s a simple God-given fact of life that a guy wants to rise to the occasion in a girl’s life. He wants to stand out from the pack as different from all the rest, so much so that she wants to spend the rest of her life with him and only him.
Every guy needs, is searching for, that one girl who cannot live without him. My wife knows that I need to be needed by her. That’s just how God wired me, and that’s the power. It’s a gift from God to both guys and girls. If girls use it properly, as my wife has, it can be a civilizing force, benefiting all mankind by challenging men to reach high, to achieve their God-given dreams, to shower and to shave.
But, if used wrongly, to treat him as just another guy with spare closet in his duplex, years later a Pavlovian trigger could unleash the memory, and you could find him on his back porch at 3:30 in the morning launching frozen hot dogs into his neighbor’s yard. With a distant look in his glassy, bloodshot eyes, he’s muttering … Annabelle … Annabelle … Annabelle …
