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Learning to Fall: super dooper pooper scooper.
When Tribble was a pup, so was I. I mean I was just three when Momma found him out behind the dress factory where she used to work.
To hear her tell it, she was goin' back one last time, a last visit to the place she gave "the best years of her life" before it was to be torn down and the lot turned into a rental storage spot. While she was there, standing on her tiptoes on the loading dock, her cute nose upturned even further, pressed against the cracked wire glass of a sliding door, she heard a cat mewl followed by a sad whimper.
The overturned dumpster off the far end of the dock held bolts of shredded cloth molding in the humid summer afternoon, cotton fabric blood red steeped in sloppy kitchen scraps that fed a hungry brood of kittens and one scraggly puppy, Tribble. Momma and Dad trained him, I just played with him. I never knew what housebreakin' a dog meant: I thought they all came that way, knowin' what to do and where.
With Penguin in the house, my puppy--MY PUPPY (!)-- it was my responsibility to train him, but Dad said he'd help out.
We stayed up all night long that first night, watchin' for any sign that he would be frantic, full of pee or poo, needin' to let go, prancin' in a little circle--the pee dance. Only once did we miss, and then just barely, and he peed on the floor in the kitchen just a little. Otherwise, Dad and I taught him that outdoors, at least outside the kitchen door, was where he needed to do his business. Each time he peed or pooed Dad and I would give him a little treat and hug on him and love him to pieces; one time, lovin' even more pee right out of his little willy.
I only thought about my burn and my gimp arm once, and about Tribble and Terry maybe only twice. Okay, maybe three or four times.
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